UK Government sets out Covid Plan A and Plan B for the winter

Plan A to combat the feared autumn and winter rise in Covid infections seems pretty straightforward:

Offering jabs to secondary school pupils and booster vaccinations for the over-50s and people working in frontline health and social care.

But if that doesn’t work, Plan B presents bigger political problems.

It could mean the reintroduction of compulsory masks, instructions to work at home again, and even Covid passports for clubs and concerts in England.

The latest 24-hour government figures show a further 185 people are reported to have died with Covid,

bringing the total in the last week to 963.

And there have been more than 26,500 new cases in the UK.

In the last seven days, there have been a total of just over 230,000 people testing positive.