More Covid vaccines as EU dispute over supplies threatens border on island of Ireland

We had good news and bad news with vaccines today. The good, that two new vaccines have performed well in tests.

The bad news, the EU has escalated its legal battle with British-Swedish vaccine maker AstraZeneca and is threatening to prevent vaccines crossing from the EU to the UK.

There is no daily update on the number of deaths in the latest 24-hour government figures, owing to what are described as “processing issues”.

But the figures do show that there have been more than 29,000 new cases in the UK. More than 440,000 people received their first dose of a Covid vaccine yesterday. That means that 7.89 million people have now received their first dose.