Here’s the moment Santa was arrested at today’s anti-lockdown protest:
Coronavirus deaths hit new daily record in Greece
Greece has reported 121 coronavirus deaths overnight – its highest daily today to date.
The country’s death toll now stands at 2,223.
Meanwhile, health authorities reported 1,747 Covid-19 cases today, bringing the total since the first case was detected in February to 103,034.
“This year’s Christmas will be very different,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a local radio station.
The country is under lockdown until December 7, with repeated appeals to the public to conform to distancing regulations.
“I really ask for some more patience and one more effort ahead of Christmas,” Mr Mitsotakis said.
A two-month lockdown in March helped contain the spread of infections but a renewed spike since October prompted new restrictions.
Priti Patel’s response to lockdown protests:
Responding to the anti-lockdown protests, Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “We’ve seen our police officers yet again do incredible work to ensure that they help to stop the spread of this awful virus.
“The people that are protesting today have been protesting for many months, and we’ve seen this over successive weekends.”
She added: “We ask everybody to be conscientious – we all know the regulations and the guidance, we have brought these measures in to save lives and to prevent preventable deaths.”
Priti Patel’s response to lockdown protests:
Responding to the anti-lockdown protests, Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “We’ve seen our police officers yet again do incredible work to ensure that they help to stop the spread of this awful virus.
“The people that are protesting today have been protesting for many months, and we’ve seen this over successive weekends.”
She added: “We ask everybody to be conscientious – we all know the regulations and the guidance, we have brought these measures in to save lives and to prevent preventable deaths.”
Here’s more on the latest figures, and the action over in central London:
UK death toll up by 479 as cases continue to drop
The Government said a further 479 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Saturday, bringing the UK total to 58,030.
Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 73,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
The Government said that, as of 9am on Saturday, there had been a further 15,871 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK.
It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 1,605,172.
England’s hospital death toll up by 289
A further 289 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England.
This brings the total number of Covid deaths reported in the country’s hospitals to 40,197.
The patients were all aged between 27 and 100.
All except 16, aged between 45 and 92, had known underlying health conditions.
The deaths occurred between October 14 and November 27.
Scotland records another 44 coronavirus deaths
Scotland has recorded a further 44 coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours, Scottish Government figures show.
There have been 788 new cases of Covid-19 reported, with the daily test positivity rate at 4.4 per cent, up from four per cent on Friday, figures released on Saturday show.
Since the start of the outbreak, 3,720 people have died after testing positive for the virus within the previous 28 days.
There were 1,077 people in hospital on Friday, down from 1,099 the previous day.
Of these 77 were in intensive care, down from 80.
More on today’s protests here:
Zahawi ‘delighted’ at new vaccine role
Nadhim Zahawi said he was “delighted” to have been asked to become the minister responsible for the coronavirus vaccine rollout.
He tweeted: “Delighted to have been asked by @BorisJohnson to become the minister for Covid vaccine deployment.
“A big responsibility and a big operational challenge but absolutely committed to making sure we can roll out vaccines quickly – saving lives and livelihoods and helping us #buildbackbetter.”
