Talking of real world evidence, the mass vaccination of children as young as five will not yet go ahead, despite safety regulators giving the jab the green light.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said it wants more real-world evidence before recommending the jab, finding that only two healthy children would be prevented from needing intensive care for every million doses dispensed.
However, around 330,000 children with underlying health conditions will be offered two reduced doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, spaced eight weeks apart.
Read why the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) today approved the vaccination as safe and effective for all children aged five and older.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has said getting vaccinated is a moral issue.
Wales tightens restrictions
All the data above has not stopped Wales imposing tougher restrictions on life from 6am on Boxing Day.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said the measures are a revised version of alert level two and are designed to help keep businesses open and trading. All the details are here.
Meanwhile, angry Scots have lashed out at Nicola Sturgeon’s Government over being forced to continue self-isolating for 10 days if they catch Covid, amid growing pressure on her to quickly follow England’s change to seven days.
People took to social media to vent their fury over the Scottish Government’s failure to immediately emulate the reduction.
Fourth dose ‘necessary’
The spread of the omicron variant has prompted Germany’s health minister to say a fourth vaccination will be necessary.
The country has ordered four million doses of the newly approved vaccine Novavax and 11 million doses of the new Valneva shot, which is waiting for marketing authorisation.
The Novavax shots will arrive in the country in January, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said.
Germany requires a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving from the UK and Malaysia and Singapore have become the latest Asian countries to tighten travel restrictions amid the global surge of the omicron variant. Read on for details.
PS – Thanks again for sharing your unique family Christmas traditions to try to help your fellow Front Page readers enjoy this year’s festivities. Please do email yours to us here, with the subject line “Christmas traditions” and leaving your name, age and where you are from. Here is some amusing inspiration from Liz Powell from Ontario, Canada:
“I have had Benign Essential Tremor for many years now. My hands will jerk, and whatever I am holding will go flying. On Christmas Day, 35 years ago, I was carrying a bowl of cranberry sauce through to the dining table when my hands jerked – the glass bowl went upwards, shattered, and the sauce clung to the ceiling for a moment or two as the glass fragments descended. The red sauce began to drip down. We have made it a tradition to ceremonially ‘feed the ceiling’ on Christmas Day. My daughter will carry the sauce through, pausing to step up on a stool and place a dab onto the ceiling – to the great amusement of her child!”
Comment and analysis
Around the world: Bitcoin miners in Russia’s east
When you step onto Marina’s veranda, the first thing you notice is the hissing. The 64-year-old’s modest cottage in Irkutsk, Siberia, is guarded by several computer hard drives, blinking red and green. When her son-in-law commented on the sound, Marina waved a manicured hand. “I told him: Don’t criticise. Look into this first,” she says. Marina, a mother of four, has made thousands of pounds since 2016 and is one of over 14,000 cryptocurrency-mining households in Irkutsk, which emerged this year as the Bitcoin capital of Russia. In this dispatch, Nataliya Vasilyeva, reveals how dirt-cheap electricity in Siberia is empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs to mine for crypto in the city.
Wednesday long-read
Bullseye! What happens when politicians lose the crowd
