Covid-19: PM 'anxious' about variant and travel firms refund warning

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

Boris Johnson has said he is "anxious" about a Covid variant first detected in India and is "ruling nothing out" to tackle its spread in the UK. Surge vaccination - focusing extra doses of the vaccine to specific areas to immunise a larger section of the population - could be one of the options. The India variant is one of four mutated versions of coronavirus designated as being "of concern". You can read more about the variants here.

Travel companies have been warned they must be ready to refund consumers if foreign holidays are cancelled by the pandemic this summer. The Competition and Markets Authority received 23,000 complaints last year because of cancelled trips - and took action against five big firms, who have now refunded £200m. This year, the watchdog has reminded package holiday firms of their legal obligations. The UK government has said people can travel abroad again from Monday, but destinations will be ranked according to risk - and there are fears their status could change suddenly.

Crime recorded by police in England and Wales in 2020 fell by 8%, with lockdown causing theft reports to drop by more than a quarter, new figures show. The Office for National Statistics figures also showed firearms offences fell by 11% and knife crime by 9%. But reports of domestic abuse increased, as did fraud based on online shopping.

The NHS contact-tracing app prevented hundreds of thousands of coronavirus cases - and thousands of deaths - researchers have predicted. The findings, in a peer-reviewed paper, also included the fact that on average, each confirmed case of the virus who consented to their contacts being notified through the app prevented one new case. Some of the researchers were themselves involved in the creation of the NHS contact-tracing app, and had previously released some of the estimates. But the inclusion in the journal Nature means the paper has now been peer-reviewed by other academics. The app has been used regularly by 16.5 million people since its launch in September, figures show.

The Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City is to take place in Porto, Portugal. It was due to be held in Istanbul but Turkey was then placed on England's red list for travel. The final, on 29 May, will be attended by 6,000 fans from each club - and because Portugal is on the green list, they will not have to quarantine. Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said depriving fans of watching the match in person was "not an option".

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Find out more about which age groups are now being offered a coronavirus vaccine across the UK with our explainer here.

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