Amazon Dissolves Grocery Delivery Service, Amazon Pantry
According to a report from Bloomberg, Amazon has announced an end to their Amazon Pantry program
AstraZeneca is to cut deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine to the European Union by 60 per cent in the first quarter of the year due to production problems, in a blow to the bloc’s efforts to push back against the virus. The British firm was expected to deliver about 80 million doses to the 27 EU countries by the end of March, but now only 31 million will be delivered. The decrease will further hamper Europe's Covid-19 vaccination drive after Pfizer and partner BioNTech slowed supplies of their vaccine this week, saying the move was needed because of work to ramp up production. The UK will not be affected by the shortfall, insiders stressed, because the majority of doses, produced in conjunction with the University of Oxford, are manufactured in this country. A spokesman for AstraZeneca, said: “While there is no scheduled delay to the start of shipments of our vaccine should we receive approval in Europe, initial volumes will be lower than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain. “We will be supplying tens of millions of doses in February and March to the European Union, as we continue to ramp up production volumes.”
‘There was a protocol breach when the front doors were not held open’
Professor Susan Michie said current lockdown measures are ‘the problem’ and not people who aren’t sticking to the rules.
British ministers are to discuss on Monday further tightening travel restrictions, the BBC reported on Saturday, adding that people arriving in the country could be required to quarantine in hotels. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference on Friday that the UK may need to implement further measures to protect its borders from new variants of COVID-19. Britain's current restrictions ban most international travel while new rules introduced earlier in January require a negative coronavirus test before departure for most people arriving, as well as a period of quarantine.
Knowsley, Slough and Sandwell continue to record the highest rates.
A severe thunderstorm swept Spain on Friday afternoon, January 22, treating Catalonians to a vibrant show of lightning and thunder.Antoni Velimelis shared footage from Balaguer, a city in the Lleida province of Catalonia, showing the strong wind, dark skies, and flashing lightning on Friday.Meteo Catalonia shared radar images of what they called a “whirlwind line” and said the storm crossed Catalonia in the space of just two hours with wind speeds as high as 73 mph (117 km/h).According to a translation by Google, Velimelis wrote on Twitter, “The clouds came from Aragon very fast, at the end it hailed, in just 10 minutes it flew by. Incredible!” Credit: Antoni Velimelis via Storyful
They call him the "Yorkshire Maharajah", the king of all he surveys. And certainly, for a Chancellor in a Government presiding over the deepest recession in three centuries, Rishi Sunak is a remarkably popular politician. The cynical explanation is that he is spending money like nobody before him. After all, the forecasts suggest he will soon become the first Chancellor to spend a trillion pounds in a single year. Yet the truth is something different. "He has something lacking in other politicians," says James Johnson, a pollster. "If I had to make a comparison, it would be with Tony Blair. Sunak has an extraordinary ability to connect with people." Conservative MPs are already speculating that Mr Sunak, still only 40 and Chancellor for less than a year, will become Britain's first Asian prime minister. "The relationship between Rishi and Boris is very good,” says an MP. "There's no question of a saga between them. But when Boris moves on, Rishi will become leader. The party will demand it." First impressions and first Budget On March 11, just 27 days after he became Chancellor, Mr Sunak rose to deliver his first Budget. It was to be one of the most remarkable fiscal statements made by a Chancellor in decades. Mr Sunak was already the fastest minister to reach a great office of state since the war. He was the first politician from a minority background to deliver a Budget. He would announce a fiscal expansion to meet the Prime Minister's promises. He would make an open-ended commitment to do "whatever it takes" to get the economy and NHS through the pandemic. And he would, in effect, rewrite the whole package just days later.
‘Did we predict the future again?’ asks animator David Silverman
Up to half a million fewer doses of Covid vaccine will be supplied to the NHS next week as Whitehall sources admitted the target of vaccinating priority groups by mid-February was increasingly “tight”. Deliveries of the Pfizer vaccine will be cut by between 15 and 20 per cent next week after the US firm announced delays in shipments because of work to increase capacity at its Belgian processing plant, sources said. Boris Johnson announced on Friday that more than 400,000 people in the UK were vaccinated on Thursday in another record day for the national rollout. "Our immunisation programme continues at an unprecedented rate," the Prime Minister told a Downing Street press conference. "5.4 million people across the UK have now received their first dose of the vaccine and over the last 24 hours we can report a record 400,000 vaccinations. "In England, one in 10 of all adults have received their first dose, including 71 per cent of over-80s and two-thirds of elderly care home residents."
When news emerged last month of a new, far more contagious mutation of coronavirus spreading across Britain there was only one positive straw at which to clutch. There was no evidence, said scientists, that the “Kent” variant was more deadly than the original strain. On Thursday morning, the Prime Minister was shown a paper by the Government’s Nervtag [New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Group] which appeared to destroy even that shred of hope. It considered three studies, which suggest that as well as being remarkably contagious, it is also significantly more fatal - between 30 and 90 per cent more so. Scientists don’t know why. But they think it may be that some of the behaviours which make the variant more easy to transmit, may also make it more lethal. Key among them is the stickiness of the mutation, and the way it gets into cells, and replicates.
Two serving police constables have died after testing positive for Covid-19, as the Police Federation pleads for officers to be vaccinated. Pc Michael Warren, a 37-year-old father-of-two who joined the Met in 2005, was classed as “vulnerable” and had been shielding at home, working remotely to help his team. He died on Tuesday after a positive Covid-19 test. Police Constable Abbasuddin Ahmed, 40, joined Greater Manchester Police in March 2017 and leaves behind his wife and two young children who are receiving Force support. PC Ahmed, who passed away on Thursday, has been described by his colleagues on the Stretford Response Team as 'the greatest brother in and out of work' and 'such a lovely man who was never seen without a smile on his face.' Officers also paid tribute to Abs' 'pride of being a police officer' adding: "Abs lived up his name meaning 'lion' - brave, loyal, a fighter, protective, and completely fearless. Abs will live in our hearts forever."
Care sector faces ‘devastation’ as research shows one in seven EU employees unaware that they must apply to regularise status before June 2021 or be stripped of right to work and live in UK
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COVID-19 cases are going up in areas like Preston, Redditch, West Devon and Coventry, according to the latest data.
Between 21 December and 22 January, total of 28,580 deaths reported by government
Hendrix's dad left Ramsay Street in November.
UK weather: Arctic air forecast to bring sub-zero temperatures. Freezing conditions could reach -10c and hamper clean-up effort after Storm Christoph
Mr Johnson said Democrats have to choose between 'being vindictive or staffing administration to keep nation safe’
Ireland’s health minister Stephen Donnelly and UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock have had discussions about the matter.
Vallance, Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson painted a sober picture of the weeks and months to come.