Covid-19: Shielding list expanded and youngest pupils to return to Scotland's classrooms

Here are five things you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this Tuesday evening. We'll have another update for you tomorrow morning.

The number of people being asked to shield in England is to be expanded, the government has announced. An extra 1.7 million people are expected to be added to the 2.3 million already on the list. Half of the group have not yet been vaccinated so will now be prioritised urgently by their local GPs. It comes after a new model was developed that takes into account extra factors rather than just health, including ethnicity, deprivation and weight, to work out a person's risk of becoming seriously ill if they were to catch Covid.

The youngest pupils are to return to Scotland's classrooms for face-to-face teaching from next week. The move will see all children in P1 to P3 and those at pre-school returning from Monday 22 February. Other age groups will continue to learn from home, apart from some secondary pupils who need to complete coursework. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was unlikely that any other pupils would return to school before 15 March at the earliest, while all other lockdown measures will remain in place until at least the end of this month. You can read more about the plans for reopening schools across the UK here.

England's vaccination programme is starting to pay off, with the over-80s age group now the most likely to test positive for coronavirus antibodies, Office for National Statistics testing suggests. Blood tests reveal that more over-80s than any other age group in England are showing signs of some immunity against Covid infection. Previously, younger age groups who were more likely to be exposed to the virus were the most likely to test positive for antibodies. It comes as Covid deaths have fallen - although overall, deaths are still 40% above the five-year average.

Four air passengers have each been fined £10,000 for failing to declare they had travelled from a "red-list" country, West Midlands Police has said. They were stopped at border control by officials and were not able to leave Birmingham Airport. Under new rules in force since Monday, arrivals in England have to quarantine in hotels if they have been in one of 33 countries deemed a high Covid risk within the last 10 days.

Within weeks, Cuba's domestically-produced Covid-19 vaccine, Soberana 2, will be tested on tens of thousands of volunteers, with the government hoping to give the jab to everyone on the island by the end of the year. It is an ambitious goal but a realistic one as Cuba has more than 30 years of experience in biotechnology and immunology, including producing the first meningitis B vaccine in the late 1980s. The BBC's Will Grant has been finding out more about how Cuba hopes to become the first Latin American country to produce its own coronavirus jab.

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You can find more information, advice and guides on our coronavirus page, including this piece looking at which groups are being vaccinated first in the UK.

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