[0:00]it's seven o'clock this is sky news breakfast our top stories this morning mixed messaging covered confusion ahead of new year's eve parties tonight as leading scientists warn of great concern
[0:11]over a lack of available tests venues that are normally sold out two weeks ago are half sold out and we're screaming in pain
[0:21]reasons to be cheerful labour set out their vision for a new britain in 2022 as boris johnson casts a positive outlook on the year ahead we can say one thing with certainty
[0:32]our position this december the 31st is incomparably better than last year they must be brought to justice galen maxwell's victims so attention should
[0:43]now turn to her and jeffrey epstein's accomplices i'm in new york where glenn maxwell is being held inside the brooklyn metropolitan detention center she'll remain here until she's sentenced next
[0:54]year [Music] a warning for the white house vladimir putin tells joe biden not to impose new sanctions over ukraine the world is full of beauty
[1:06]and it's up to you to capture it sky news speaks to the stars of the new film celebrating the life of 19th century artist louis wayne and his
[1:16]feline friends at the weather exceptionally mild for new year's eve but unsettled in the north with rain mostly fine for england and wales and at the quarter 2 we'll
[1:27]take a look at the morning's papers today i'll be joined by the editor of spike magazine tom slater and the author nikki hodgson
[1:34][Music] hello there very good morning i'm jonathan samuels the government is being
[1:44]accused of mixed messaging ahead of new year's eve celebrations tonight despite not bringing in further restrictions ahead of one of the biggest nights of the year boris johnson has warned
[1:55]revellers in england to be cautious as they head out and take a test if they can but there's still a shortage of lateral flow and pcr tests with calls for health staff to be given priority
[2:06]access meanwhile health leaders have warned that up to 40 percent of vaccine appointments at the moment are no shows skies sergeant chowdhury reports
[2:16]with just a day before the new year comes in it's unusual for alex proud to have time for a television interview but there's not much else to do
[2:27]look there's hardly any staff needed we're not sold out and that story is the same across the country you know venues that are normally sold out two weeks ago a half sold out and we're screaming in
[2:37]pain alex says confusion over what is and isn't safe is driving business away from his club and country this is one of the few things britain really is famous
[2:48]for it's nighttime industry whether it's manchester liverpool edinburgh glasgow or london this is what we're famous for and we destroy this you're taking half the reason people come to britain
[2:59]unlike in other parts of the uk in england the prime minister has given big indoor new year celebrations the go ahead in london there will be no fireworks to
[3:10]thunder through the city but there will be one sound reminiscent of a time without kovid the last time we heard big ben ring in a new year well
[3:21]that was long before the pandemic this time it'll chime in yet another uncertain year ahead when there are rising coved cases and mounting concern
[3:31]about people mixing over new year's celebrations when there's a shortage of covered tests scientists say crowded indoor parties are the perfect conditions for spreading
[3:43]kovid i find it odd really that we're in a situation where we're worried enough about the wave of omicron to build um
[3:52]new nightingale capacity um but we're we're not worried enough to suggest to people that new year's eve parties are not a good
[4:01]idea as england parties the government hopes the booster shot will be enough to keep us all safe it says the target to offer one to every
[4:11]eligible adult has been reached though of course that doesn't mean every person given the chance necessarily took it around 7 in 10 adults have now had a
[4:23]booster but many more will need to as the uk seeks to beat kovid in the year ahead sadia chowdhury sky news in westminster
[4:34]well even though there aren't any restrictions in place in england for new year's eve tonight that's not the case in the other nations of the uk pub landlords in wales and scotland look set
[4:44]to have their profits slashed as regular punters travel over the border to bring in 2022 free of restrictions and at ten past nine we'll speak to some of those
[4:54]pub landlords on england's borders with wales and scotland who are braced for what will be very different new year's eve this evening and as the nation prepares to see in 2022 political
[5:04]leaders have been setting out their hopes and visions for the new year boris johnson said in the fight against kovid 19 the uk is in an incomparably better
[5:14]position than 12 months ago whilst the labour leader sakia stamina said he believes the best still lies ahead for britain happy new year 2022 is almost upon us
[5:26]and whatever the challenges that fate continues to throw in our way and whatever the anxieties we may have about the weeks and months ahead particularly about omicron and the growing numbers in
[5:37]hospitals we can say one thing with certainty our position this december the 31st is incomparably better than last year
[5:48]given the last two years our country's been through it would be all too easy to lose heart but like you i believe in britain
[5:59]i believe the best still lies ahead for britain that if we make the right choices together we can seize the future and make it work
[6:09]for every family in every part of britain that must be the true legacy of our sacrifices and pain of the last two
[6:18]years in the pandemic well we can take a look now at the latest covert data there were 189 213
[6:27]new cases of kovid 19 reported in the uk over 24 hours 146 604 of those new cases were in england another 332 deaths have
[6:39]been reported within 28 days of a positive test that brings the total number of deaths in the uk to 148 400 421 the high number of deaths
[6:49]reported on thursday does include a backlog of hospital death data from the nhs between the 24th and the 29th of december
[6:59]well as of wednesday there were 11 898 people in hospital in the uk with kovid 19 more than a thousand more than the previous day and the highest total since
[7:09]early march however this is still well below the peak of more than 38 000 in january and the number of people on ventilators remain steady at 868.
[7:19]32 607 people have received their first dose of a vaccine with 43 766 getting their second that means that nearly 47.4 million people have now
[7:31]received their second dose onto the boosters 435 293 new boosters or third jabs were reported in the latest 24-hour period
[7:41]more than 33 and a half million people have now had one of those well away from coronavirus they must be brought to justice is the message from
[7:52]the victims of glenn maxwell who have spoken out of their relief for the guilty verdicts of her trial in new york maxwell was found guilty of five out of six counts she faced including sex
[8:03]trafficking a minor for the late billionaire jeffrey epstein to abuse as she awaits her sentencing attention has now turned to blowing the whistle on maxwell's and epstein's other
[8:15]accomplices whose survivors believe were involved in the scandal sky's us correspondent martha calner reports now from new york gilan maxwell traveled on private planes
[8:26]between mansions on sprawling estates but inside these homes she and jeffrey epstein orchestrated a sex trafficking operation teenagers from fractured families
[8:38]singled out for sexual abuse and brought here virginia's you frey says she was trafficked around the world and forced to have sex with famous men including
[8:47]prince andrew claims he denies rhino is just grateful because we were told constantly you know these people will never go to jail they
[8:58]they're too powerful they're too rich and and we live in a new day and it just goes to show that you know
[9:09]this is not the end this is just the beginning this former federal prosecutor believes maxwell will spend the rest of her life in prison unless she can cut a deal
[9:20]is there any chance that glenn maxwell's sentence could be commuted if she were to blow the whistle for example on co-conspirators there certainly is a process where
[9:31]individuals can cooperate after conviction and get you know credit for that cooperation in this case i haven't seen any
[9:41]indication that that's going to happen she would have to bring some incredibly valuable information to the table for the government to want to meet with her
[9:52]after the verdict was handed down gulen maxwell was brought back here to the brooklyn metropolitan detention center where she spent the past 18 months of her life i've just spoken to her
[10:03]personal lawyer leah saffin who was dropping off legal papers in the building behind me she said she'd not been allowed to see maxwell but repeated to me allegations that she's been
[10:13]subjected to what she called cruel and unusual punishments inside here annie farmer's testimony was key to bringing down maxwell but it wasn't just
[10:24]the women who took the stand in this case whose lives were devastated only four victims testified and they were very brave to do so but it's estimated that there may have
[10:35]been 160 or more victims of jeffrey epstein and a number of them may also have been
[10:46]victims of ms maxwell they were partners in crime two sexual predators but survivors believed there were more involved in this scheme for
[10:56]whom justice is also long overdue sky news new york martha has the latest for us now from new york
[11:05]gillen maxwell faces a total maximum of 65 years in prison her lawyers and her family are keen that that sentencing process happens as soon as possible so
[11:16]she can be moved away from this facility to another elsewhere in the country which they hope will be more comfortable her family insist on her innocence they're defiant and say that she's been
[11:28]scapegoated for the crimes of geoffrey epstein but this is not the end of the story as far as the legal process goes for gulen maxwell she still faces two
[11:38]outstanding perjury charges it may be though that federal prosecutors opt to lay those to one side because they've been so successful in this initial
[11:48]prosecution and because it seems likely that glenn maxwell will already spend the rest of her life behind bars ahmath kelner there now u.s president
[11:59]joe biden has spoken to his russian counterpart vladimir putin amid continuing concerns over the build-up of russian troops at the ukrainian border it's the second time this month that the
[12:09]two leaders have discussed the issue sky security and defense editor debra haynes joins me now so deborah uh the two men having this phone conversation do we know what was discussed well it seems as though the the issues
[12:23]that they went through were quite similar to the conversation that they had earlier in the month but the fact that the two leaders are talking is hugely significant at this time of
[12:33]heightened crisis over ukraine and concerns particularly in the united states and the uk at the potential for a possible russian invasion of further
[12:42]invasion of ukraine in the new year now specific details in terms of actual negotiating points haven't emerged and joe biden repeated the threats that the
[12:54]united states has made that any further military action by russia into ukraine would be met with unprecedented sanctions but president putin retorted
[13:04]to this saying that any sanctions now or later by the united states could lead to a complete breakdown in relations between the us and russia which would be
[13:16]something that he said would be seen as a huge mistake by future generations so a sign there of the russian leader setting his position
[13:26]in response to any further american action but the key message from the united states is that any progress in diplomacy has to happen at a time of
[13:37]de-escalation and at the moment we're just not seeing any sign of that around ukraine where around a hundred thousand russian troops have been building but on the russian side they have asked
[13:49]very clearly that they want guarantees that the united states and its nato allies won't be posing a threat to its borders they make the point that how
[13:59]would the united states like it if weapons from another country were put close to its borders obviously the u.s says that any actions around that area
[14:11]by nato are purely defensive but that doesn't wash with russia but this dialogue was all about really setting the scenes for some important diplomatic
[14:21]moves that are going to be happening early in the new year between the two sides yeah we'll see how things develop in 2022 deborah thank you very much now with the surge in omicron cases
[14:33]starting to translate to increased hospitalizations pressure is mounting on the health service once again but there are fears that a shortage of covid 19 rapid tests is leaving the nhs hamstrung
[14:44]with thousands of healthcare workers now having to self-isolate joining me is the chair of the british medical association dr chand nag paul great to see you this morning on this new year's eve
[14:55]so just explain to me how much of an issue nhs staff absence is at the moment and this is a significant problem because when you have such
[15:06]high levels of omicron in the community nhs staff are also affected in fact in the period before christmas we had seen
[15:13]a 50 increase in staff absence due to covet uh across the country now today when the pub new figures are published i think that will be even higher in london
[15:24]in particular which is in a good example of where the problem lies is that we've seen up to about a three times increase in staff absence from
[15:35]either infection or isolation in some london hospitals now that's you know creating huge pressure on the system when we already uh are short staffed at the
[15:46]busiest time of the year and to add to that problem we now have the situation where many staff cannot get their natural flow tests or a pcr
[15:56]test which means that they can't return to work because what they need to return to work is to demonstrate a negative lateral flow test on day six and seven which was specially introduced so that
[16:07]we could shorten the period of isolation so this is creating enormous problems for us and for the workforce that remains they're having to carry out the work of
[16:17]their absent colleagues and that's adding additional strain and stress but patients are therefore going to suffer as a result yeah now the department of health says that the nhs has its own dedicated
[16:29]supply channel when it comes to getting tests is that not working unfortunately we've had reports from across the country of healthcare staff
[16:39]who have not been able to access their uh tests and results uh and as a result uh you know they haven't been able to provide the evidence that they are able to return to work uh in some cases
[16:51]there's been a delay where uh for example they could have returned to work on say yesterday but but because of the lack of being able to have a test they've had to uh um you know delay that
[17:02]day by day and that just means that you're for example in a gp practice you're having to cancel an entire gp clinic surgery or you're going to have to cancel a whole session of taking of a
[17:13]staff member who might be taking bloods like a healthcare assistant having to cancel her clinic or his clinic so you know this is the sort of reality we're having to face at the moment yeah it's a real worry the health
[17:25]secretary is saying that supplies will be constrained for a fortnight due to demand so it's not going to go away immediately just while we've got you on let me ask you about something else that's in in the newspapers this morning
[17:36]they had a head of nhs providers says that they don't believe more curbs are needed numbers are going up of coronavirus cases but serious illness
[17:47]amongst the elderly hasn't risen significantly um that's cause for optimism isn't it i i think i mean we need to really watch the data very carefully
[17:58]what's concerning is that we are seeing significant increases in people in hospital in fact we now last yesterday the number of people admitted and also the number
[18:09]of patients in hospital you know is at a level as high as during the lockdown earlier this year uh in spring uh in sort of february march now that's a
[18:20]pretty significant number and it's increasing so whilst the proportion of people who end up in hospital as a result of omicron is is smaller we're definitely seeing significant increases
[18:32]and and the trouble is that those um increases in hospitalization mean that other patients and you know six million people are on a waiting list at the
[18:40]moment it's a record for the nhs uh 312 000 have been waiting more than 12 months it means that they can't then be treated in hospital because their beds
[18:50]are being occupied by other patients you know 25 000 patients were admitted with uh um covid uh in in a four week period before christmas those are 25 000 beds
[19:02]that could have been available for other uh patients so to interrupt that's 25 000 people who are admitted hospital because of covid or for other reasons and just happen to have covered or get carried
[19:14]right now okay that's a very good question and in fact that's data that i don't have and data that we really do need to be is important to be made available because i absolutely agree we need to differentiate between the two uh we
[19:25]don't have that data okay all right we will leave it there and uh we wish you a happy new year dr chan negpol thank you thank you very much and now murder investigation has been
[19:36]launched after a 15 year old boy was stabbed to death in a park in south london police were called to ashburton park in croydon just after seven o'clock last night it's the 29th teenage killing
[19:48]in the capital this year the highest since 2008 guys melania vasilinovich is in the newsroom for us just awful this case what are the details really horrible jonathan the police officers
[19:59]gave the board first aid before the emergency services the ambulance service arrived but sadly he was pronounced dead at 7 36 p.m now formal identification
[20:10]has not yet taken place but the police said that the boys family have been notified and a postmortem will be held in due course the police also said that no one has yet been arrested for this
[20:21]and as you say this is just the latest in a string of teenage homicides in london this year 29 with the youngest victim of stabbing being just 14 years old
[20:33]this deadly toll equals the peak from 2008. now the police say that they are throwing all the resources that they have behind investigating teenage
[20:44]homicides and they also say that they are not taking stabbings lightly they're not being complacent about this but every single time something like this happens there's a heartbroken family
[20:55]left behind and there's also a community asking what could have been done to prevent something like this from happening malaysia thank you let's take a look at some of the other
[21:06]stories making news this morning and a state of emergency has been declared in the u.s state of colorado after wildfires burned hundreds of homes near denver at least six people have been
[21:16]injured with tens of thousands now told to evacuate the blazes started on thursday morning and have quickly spread due to strong winds of up to 105 miles an hour
[21:27]now cove isolation can be unpleasant at the best of times but one woman has shared her ordeal of isolating in a plane toilet marissa fatteo tested positive for covid during her flight
[21:38]from chicago to iceland and decided to lock herself in the loo for five hours to protect the other passengers she captured her journey of confinement in the tiny cubicle in a tick-tock video
[21:49]that's been viewed more than three million times i started having a severe sore throat and so i just took my rapid test and i brought it into the bathroom and
[22:00]within what felt like two seconds there were two lines there's like 150 people on this flight um and my biggest fear was giving it to
[22:10]them [Music]
[22:22]research has uncovered a masonic connection to why revelers around the world link arms when they sing ol lang syne at new year the study of robert burns best love song links to the
[22:33]practice to freemasonry where singing with arms crossed and hands joined was a parting ritual in many lodges and i bet you still don't know the words
[22:44]thousands of people in england will be flooding to the pubs and clubs later to see out 2021 with no restrictions in place but the situation in scotland and wales of course isn't quite as jolly
[22:55]with restrictions interrupting usual new year celebrations well greg mulholland is the campaign director at campaign for pubs and he joins me now nice to see you
[23:05]thanks for being with us tricky times isn't it talk to me about tonight what are pub managers saying about the differing restrictions depending on where you live
[23:16]well it's incredibly frustrating for republicans particularly of course republicans who are just on the scottish side of the scotland england border or the welsh
[23:27]side of the the england wales border you have situations where in some cases people's nearest pub is actually in the other country um but there's a huge temptation for
[23:39]people in scotland in wales to travel over the border to have a new year without restrictions and that's that's a further blow actually for scottish and welsh
[23:49]republicans on top of the the very difficult december and that's a difficult december for all republicans in the uk so you know this was entirely predictable and it's something that that will happen
[24:01]and i'm afraid that it hasn't really been coordinated in the whole of the uk yeah so anecdotally you're hearing exactly that are you that lots of uh pub goers uh and clubbers are literally
[24:12]gonna nip over the border for a night out i think we have to be you know more realistic that there are many people many people who live in scotland and live in wales who have
[24:24]family and friends in england many of them have already traveled many of them are staying with those friends and family and perfectly reasonably to do so and of course we'll be taking advantage of
[24:34]being able to go out without restrictions um so yes there will be some people who will travel but equally there are some people who as i say who actually live in wales and in scotland their nearest
[24:46]towns in some cases even their nearest pubs i was down in the community that is on the river y and there are houses in wales in the same community and their
[24:58]local pubs in england there's actually another pub just on the other side of the river over a bridge that will have different restrictions so you know you cannot possibly say to anyone in that community that they
[25:08]cannot go to one or other of the pubs and yet they have entirely different rules and are both accessible and both a matter of a few minutes walk so yes this will happen inevitably and
[25:19]it shows frankly that we need a little bit more common sense and you know we also have to remember that republicans have all the way through this done their very best to keep people
[25:30]safe to ensure places are ventilated and actually we would argue that pubs are safer than people gathering at homes anyway so we are relaxed about this and
[25:39]frankly we think ministers should be too but pubs do need a good new year they need that because the next month january is always one of the toughest ones and it's a tough time for
[25:51]the hospitality anyway yeah such an important time of year isn't it christmas and new year you've written a letter to the prime minister and the chancellor what are you calling for
[26:01]well the reality is that obviously the the chancellor came forward relatedly it has to be said with an announcement of some grants for hospitality
[26:12]in in england but those those grants and many pubs will receive just 2 700 pounds they hardly cover the loss of a weekend in
[26:23]many cases the loss from a usual night in december and december has been anything but usual for hospitality because of vomit common
[26:33]because of government announcements so if the if the government are actually all governments if they're serious about wanting to keep alive our pop culture to support our pubs
[26:43]through this ongoing pandemic and it very much is still suddenly ongoing and has to be dealt with then there has to be further financial support and there has to be further financial support if
[26:54]there are any more restrictions in any of those in any of the four home nations of the uk and governments have to have that at the forefront of their decision and they can do that in various ways they can do that by cancelling business
[27:05]rates by having a lower rate of bat for all pub sales which is not the case it's only for food at the moment and so there are various ways that certainly governments
[27:16]can support pubs going forward and if they want them to get through another difficult winter until we finally get to the other side of that pandemic then they need to do so otherwise i'm afraid
[27:26]that we will see more businesses failing yeah and nobody nobody wants to see that of course all right well we listen uh we wish you the very best for 2022. it's been a really tough
[27:36]12 months we raise a glass to you as we head into next year greg mulholland thank you very much indeed nice to meet you now it's less than six hours until
[27:48]australia bids farewell to 2021 and welcomes in the new year and despite rising covey cases sydney still going ahead with its annual fireworks display
[27:58]it was certainly a possibility that the fireworks might have been cancelled in fact many revelers in sydney and indeed in australia are choosing to watch the
[28:08]fireworks from the comfort of their homes that's as covert cases rapidly rise in the past 24 hours in new south wales alone 21
[28:19]151 new infections have been reported that's the same amount that was detected in all of australia yesterday so we are certainly seeing that rapid spread of
[28:30]the omicron variant however the number the number of hospitalizations and also patients admitted to icu remains relatively low and quite stable so
[28:40]authorities are reassured by that also around 95 percent of australia's population is fully vaccinated so authorities are advising residents if they're going out to take every
[28:52]precaution to be safe but certainly to enjoy the new year i'm so i'm here at uh blues point in sydney one of sydney's best vantage points as you can see
[29:02]behind me it typically would be a lot busier than what we're seeing at the moment particularly at this time of day the fireworks are due to start at 9pm for families and at 12am they will be
[29:13]the obviously the big show spectacular but we're not seeing the crowds that we would be seeing usually in a pre-covert area era rather the prime minister has
[29:23]advised that this is life undercovered however and residents should do their very best to ring in the new year and say goodbye to what's been a pretty crummy 2021
[29:34]particularly with some of the strict covert measures that we've seen and also some of the world's toughest lockdown restrictions oh lovely clear blue sky sun shining on the opera house there in sydney let's
[29:46]see how it's looking [Music] here look forward to brighter skies
[29:56]the weather sponsored by qatar airways not as hot as sydney but it's still incredibly mild for this time of year with spring-like temperatures but it'll
[30:06]also be wet and windy at times winter returns with colder temperatures in the early days of 2022. well this morning rain lies across north island along with central and southern scotland there's a secondary rain belt sweeping eastwards
[30:18]across england and wales it'll be a mild start to the day away from the chilly north but also windy with gusts up to 55 miles an hour southern parts of the country will become largely fine with bright or sunny spells developing
[30:29]meanwhile rain over central scotland the weather sponsored by qatar airways did you know if more of us walked rolled
[30:40]bikes and scooted to school we would make a big difference to the air pollution around our school yeah like us 2021 is going to come to a very mild end
[30:50]but it will also be windy and unsettled early rain clearing east will leave a largely fine day for england and wales whilst rain over central southern scotland will ease
[31:01]further rain spreads northeast from ireland later giving a rather wet new year's eve for scotland these wet and windy conditions will help to keep air quality high with levels only reaching
[31:12]one or two on the air pollution index the air quality report sponsored by phillips air purifiers time for a look at this morning's papers
[31:26]and joining me are the editor of spite magazine tom slater and the author nikki hodgson great to see you both again uh i hope all things are well this new year's
[31:35]eve uh why don't we start um nikki with uh the hospitality sector it's a real issue isn't that i've just been speaking to greg who is one of the industry
[31:46]leaders saying that it's such a depressing time and they don't really know where they stand given the differing restrictions depending on where you live yeah well absolutely i mean the hospitality industry has been absolutely
[31:58]savaged by covid and i say that as someone who's married to a hospitality owner so we really have been through the ring of these past couple of years with things i think what is tricky is that this
[32:08]this christmas you know everybody was kind of primped and primed for a really good festive season and then omicron just kind of drifted in at the worst possible moment for the industry and for the government to decide about whether
[32:20]to take restrictions or not obviously boris johnson hasn't done that in england but in wales and scotland we do have these restrictions but even so takings this year have still been 60
[32:30]down uh on 2019. so you know two bad years what's really important about this time of year for the hospitality industry is that it allows it to build its cash reserves for the quiet months
[32:41]of january and february and obviously it hasn't been able to do that for two years running so smaller businesses like pubs like single bars have just got absolutely no chance at this stage you know they're not really getting any
[32:52]financial assistance it's very very minimal it's certainly not enough to boost them through what has just been a terrible 18 months for them and so we're just going to see even more businesses probably go bust in the new year which
[33:04]is not really the way many people want to start 2022. yeah tom just before we move on to the front of the times um is the government doing enough do you think to help the hospitality sector well it's difficult isn't it because no
[33:15]new restrictions have been brought in and yet even just the mood music coming from government obviously has a huge impact on people's willingness to go out and all the rest of it so he just hopes more support can be forthcoming because
[33:27]of the fact that everyone would would lose out if you know a huge section of the hospitality industry just didn't make it through this this last winters it's a very serious problem yeah yeah you're right um while staying with a
[33:38]similar sort of theme front of the times uh kovid kerbs um there's no need for any more according to nhs chief certainly uh looking at the data as it
[33:47]stands right now it would appear that maybe the government has done the right thing by uh by not clamping down further well exactly there's actually quite a
[33:57]lot of good news out there believe it or not if people are willing to see past the kind of quite concerning case numbers in that a lot of the kind of fundamentals are so different to where we were last year it's easy to have that
[34:08]sense of deja vu and yet as chris hopson from nhs providers as well as a bunch of other people who were even experts on the front line been pointing out to us recently is that because of the vaccine
[34:19]defenses because we're not in the position that we were in last year that the the number of cases that we're seeing and even some of the hospitalization figures in recent days are not going to
[34:30]carry on and they're certainly not going to turn into the kind of tidal wave of hospitalizations and deaths that we saw last year you know people are spending a lot less time in hospital than they did in previous waves there's also been a
[34:42]huge rise as chris hopson has pointed out in what they call kind of incidental covered infections so a large chunk of those numbers are people who might have gone in with a broken leg or because they fell off their bike but test
[34:53]positive upon arrival and therefore they make their way into the figures and these things aren't disaggregated so there's really a lot to be positive about going into this new year actually obviously we have to be cautious the
[35:03]virus has surprised us before all the rest of it but the vaccines really do work and the fact that we're seeing even from nhs leaders this conviction that we don't need more draconian restrictions on our lives that this is a problem that
[35:15]can be managed it's something that a lot of people can take with genuine hope into the new year i think yeah we all need that don't we as we head into 2022 just looking at the front of the daily star
[35:25]nikki um if we want to keep free of restrictions then we do need to be able to test ourselves and make sure that we're in the clear and we know there is a big problem with uh testing kits at the moment and here on the front of the
[35:37]star they're talking about cowboys charging 210 pounds for a kit tell us about this yeah so obviously it's a jokey headline but there is a serious point underneath this story which is
[35:48]that you know people are taking advantage of the fact you can't get hold of lateral flow tests they're being sold online for 210 pounds which is just you know it's completely moral really isn't it as well as being extortionate and i
[35:59]think the even more serious problem down the line potentially is if we can't get on top of the supply issue there could become a genuine problem with the quality of the tests out there i mean what's stopping anybody who's a bit of a
[36:10]charlatan putting together some kind of proxy test and then selling that for a price and that would be really really damaging to our testing situation across the uk and to the figures that we know
[36:22]that you know the figures that we know are real or not about covert yeah the picture there of uh of dell boy trotters testing kits i mean tom do you
[36:32]think there's an argument to concentrate fully on the lateral flow test rather than the pcr test almost scrap the pcr tests which take a long time to come back which are hard to get hold of anyway and we know that lateral flows
[36:44]are uh perhaps better than we than we initially thought it telling you whether or not you've got covid yeah well it's a tricky one as far as as you say lateral flows are great particularly for catching what you're
[36:54]most infectious um pcr tests obviously a lot more sensitive so people tend to use those as almost like a follow-up to a lateral flow test to confirm but it's obvious that you know there needs to be this kind of mix of the two i suppose
[37:06]and the the issue at the moment is the fact that because the government has urged people to be testing themselves even when they haven't got any symptoms then naturally the people where they're most needed it's just it's just been missing at the moment i mean i think it
[37:17]is worth remembering though that one of the things we have done well in this country is testing you saw recently queues around the block in america are people just trying to get a lateral flow test so whilst these pinches have been significant and omicron has really set
[37:29]that up for us this has been one of the things i think we've done better than we might like to imagine in some way um now nikki uh paris u-turn let's expat
[37:39]britain's return to eu homes via france this is a welcome move isn't it but then still banning uh brits from going directly to france is that right i don't know actually because i think
[37:50]this might be tom's story oh this is tom's story all right tom do you want to tell us about this of course no so um this is uh it's been rumbling on for a couple of days now so british people who live in the eu will
[38:02]now be able to return home via france paris had previously brought in this ban effectively on expats transiting through the country by road we saw many of these kind of viral stories of people trying
[38:13]to get back to their homes in the european union but being turned away by a euro tunnel in particular between folkestone and calais it seems that sources in the telegraph story said that
[38:24]french border police had been told to interpret the existing guidance in a pretty draconian fashion we're turning away a lot of passengers but this has now been eased thankfully which will be a huge relief to those
[38:35]people trying to get back to their homes and a lot of criticism i think on the french government given the fact that um certainly whilst omicron is taking off in this country you know the rise in france has been more or less pretty
[38:46]similar over the course of recent days so that the utility of this wasn't entirely clear given the fact that it would affect so many people and caused so much distress over the festival yeah not omicron's so widespread now it does
[38:57]sort of make make it all seem but pointless all right let's talk about new z very quickly nikki uh this story in the times how are the britain how are britain's middle class is going to spend
[39:07]uh their celebrations tonight well apparently they're all going to be having dinner parties and that's based on data from waitrose where they found that searches for new year's eve recipes
[39:16]were up 160 percent this year on waitressoc.com and they were last year i think really important point though is that we were locked down last year so if people were cooking they were only cooking for their immediate family so
[39:27]you know is that actually finally a chance to go out and to have that fun but apparently really interesting here most people will be having pavlova for pudding say uh searches for the recipe
[39:37]for pavlova are up 1500 wow i love pavlova excellent it's going to be very warm as well 15 degrees celsius according to the sun tom and
[39:46]nicki thank you both very much indeed