Scotland’s chief constable, Ian Livingstone, has urged people to report any incidents or suspicions of domestic abuse to the police after warning the renewed lockdown could lead to an increase in domestic violence cases.
Livingstone said protecting vulnerable women and children living in risky situations at home “goes to the heart of our purpose, goes to the heart of our mission.”
Speaking during the Scottish government’s regular coronavirus briefings, he added: “We would urge anyone, everyone with concerns about another person – a relative, a neighbour, a friend or a colleague, to call the police.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, said the “stay at home” order in force across mainland Scotland did not mean victims of domestic abuse had to endure it. The restrictions “do not prevent you from leaving home”, she said. Additional funding had been given to women’s aid and anti-domestic violence charities, she said, to support women in crisis.
Police have handed out more than 30,000 fines under coronavirus laws since the start of the pandemic, figures show.
A total of 32,329 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) were issued by forces across England and Wales between March 27 and December 21, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
Data published on Friday showed 28,744 were handed out by forces in England. In Wales, forces issued 3,585. The figures include those handed out by British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence police.
Coronavirus rates have begun to “creep up again” in Wales after beginning to drop in the post Christmas period and the new variant has a “firm foothold” in the north of the country, the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford has said.
“On Monday, there were around 440 cases per 100,000 people in Wales. Today, this is more than 20 points higher,” Drakeford told a press conference in Cardiff.
“It is still the case that around one in four tests is positive for coronavirus, and that demonstrates that we still have very high levels of this virus circulating in the community in Wales.”
Drakeford said the new strain of coronavirus was “undoubtedly adding to the pressures that our NHS is experiencing at the moment”.
More than 2,700 coronavirus-related patients are in Welsh hospitals, with 143 people with Covid-19 in critical care beds.
“Overall, the number of people in critical care has reached the highest point in the pandemic,” he said.
The number of Covid-19 patients in Scottish hospitals has hit a new record of 1,530, higher than the peak in the first wave of the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon has reported.
She said the previous record was 1,520 in April last year. Another 93 people with confirmed Covid infections had died in the last 24 hours and 2,309 people had positive test results in the last day.
Test samples suggest about 50% of infections are from the highly-infectious B117 variant of the virus.
The daily deaths figure was the highest recorded during the pandemic, but is very likely to include deaths which happened earlier in January. Registrations have been delayed due to public holidays over Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Updated
at 7.53am EST
More than half of all major hospital trusts in England currently have more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave of the virus, analysis shows.
In two regions – eastern England and south-east England – more than three-quarters of trusts are above their first-wave peak.
Other trusts have seen their numbers rise so rapidly that they could pass their first-wave peak within days.
The analysis by the PA news agency found that of 139 acute hospital trusts who reported figures for 5 January, 84 – or 60% – had more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave in spring 2020.
Examples include:
- East Suffolk and North Essex, which had 367 confirmed Covid-19 patients as of 8am on 5 January, compared with a first-wave peak of 143.
- Barts in London, where there were 830 Covid-19 patients on 5 January, compared with a first-wave peak of 606.
- Portsmouth Hospitals University, which had 457 patients compared with a first-wave peak of 244.
- University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, which had 426 patients versus a first-wave peak of 252.
- Hull University Teaching Hospitals, where the number stood at 208 compared with a first-wave peak of 112.
Updated
at 7.30am EST
London firefighters encountered a surge in callouts to rescue animals in 2020, figures show.
The London fire brigade (LFB) was involved in 755 such incidents across the capital – more than two a day. The number of rescues rose by 20% compared with 2019 when there were 602, with the biggest rise coming in the number of non-domestic animals rescued, the figures released this week show.
When traffic fell to almost half its normal rate during the spring lockdown, social media was awash with reports of animals spotted roaming the unusually quiet city.
In April, the musician Billy Bragg posted pictures on Twitter of a herd of deer that had colonised some front gardens on Harold Hill, east London. Firefighters were on hand the next day to help one unfortunate deer stuck in metal railings.
Updated
at 7.28am EST
Students affected by the Covid crisis deserve to receive money back on fees or rent, university leaders and the academics’ union say – and the government, not universities, should foot the bill.
Prof Steve West, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England in Bristol, says the government should offer rebates by cutting the amount that students have to repay for tuition fee and living-cost loans for this year. “That would be a very powerful signal to students and society as a whole,” he says.
Students have criticised Boris Johnson on social media for failing to mention universities when announcing the national lockdown on Monday. A petition calling for a cut to tuition fees from £9,250 to £3,000 has reached 508,000 signatures. And as students face another term learning alone in their bedrooms, paying for accommodation they are not allowed to return to, many are demanding a rebate.
The Department for Education was premature in cancelling next summer’s exams, the head of a schools trust argues in a piece for Schools Week, in which he calls for a reversal of that decision.
Stuart Lock, the head of Advantage Schools trust in Bedford, which runs a primary and secondary school, writes that 12 months from now, “the anti-exam voice will only be louder, and the consequences even more severe for young people if it is successful.” He says, however:
But this is a Department for Education that has made a habit of changing their minds. Doing it again on this might be politically unpalatable, but it wouldn’t even be in the top 10 unpalatable things that have happened this week. In my view, this is one decision they should rescind.
Updated
at 6.23am EST
