Latest updates: Boris Johnson says he ‘share people’s frustrations’ as figures reveal new low in reaching contacts; further areas added to tier 2 restrictions * Sunak expands furlough replacement scheme * People waiting 48 hours for test results, double what PM promised * Prepare for digital Christmas, says Scotland adviser * Coronavirus – latest updates 5.32pm BST GRANT SHAPPS, the transport secretary, has announced that the Canary Islands, the Maldives, Denmark and the Greek island of Mykonos have been added to the travel corridors list. That means that from Sunday morning people arriving from those places will not have to quarantine. UPDATE: Following an assessment of the latest data, the Canaries, the Maldives, Denmark and Mykonos have been ADDED to the #TravelCorridors list. From 4am on Sunday 25th Oct, you will no longer need to self-isolate if you arrive from those destinations. pic.twitter.com/vVF40XKS2t The latest data indicates we need to remove Liechtenstein from the Travel Corridors list. From 4am on Sunday the 25th October, you will need to self-isolate if you arrive from there. 5.20pm BST Today NHS TEST AND TRACE published performance figures showing that the proportion of close contacts of people with Covid-19 being reached has fallen to a new low and waiting times for test results have soared to almost double the target. The government has spent more than £12bn on the service and, at the press conference, both BORIS JOHNSON and SIR PATRICK VALLANCE said it needed to improve. Look, I share people’s frustrations, and I understand totally why we do need to see faster turnaround times and we do need improve it. We need to make sure that people who do get a positive test self-isolate. That’s absolutely crucial if this is going to work in the way that it can. But I would just stress to you that the achievement of the testing operation has been colossal. They have moved from a capacity of I think 3,000, 2,000 tests per day to about 300,000 now. We’ve done 26m tests, more than any other country in Europe. And they are on track to reach capacity of 500,000 by the end of this month. The thing depends on people self-isolating and breaking the transmission. It is helping a bit already to break the transmission. About 1m contacts have been reached. It’s really important to concentrate on numbers of contacts, isolation as quickly as you can and getting things back as quickly as you can – ideally you get the whole process done within 48 hours. It’s very clear there’s room for improvement on all that and therefore that could be diminishing the effectiveness of this. It’s undoubtedly the case that test, trace and isolation becomes much more difficult to have an impact once numbers are high, it’s much more effective when numbers are low. Continue reading...
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