UK: 119 new Covid-related deaths as PM says ‘signs of second wave’ in parts of Europe – as it happened

• Nicola Sturgeon has urged holidaymakers to avoid all non-essential foreign travel and instead stay in Scotland because of the heightened risk of a sudden change in coronavirus quarantine rules. As Severin Carrell reports, the first minister said the sudden decision last Saturday to require travellers from Spain to quarantine for 14 days underlined how volatile the situation had become, after a series of Covid-19 flare-ups in other countries. Speaking during her regular coronavirus press conference, she added:

If it was me, I wouldn’t be booking a foreign holiday right now. I would choose, if I had the time to go on holiday, I would be choosing to spend it here in Scotland.

With Scotland reporting the 12th day in a row with no deaths of confirmed Covid-19 patients in hospital, Sturgeon said it was essential no unnecessary risks were taken. The Welsh government is also urging people to avoid foreign holidays. (See 1.51pm.)

• Sturgeon has said she is trying to get the UK government to follow Scotland in committing to the goal of eliminating coronavirus. (See 1.04pm and 4.27pm.)

• The UK has recorded a further 119 coronavirus deaths, taking the official headline total to 45,878. (See 4.33pm.)

That’s all from me for today.

Our coronavirus coverage continues on our global coronavirus blog. It’s here.

Boris Johnson has said he would like to see motorists being more “courteous” towards cyclists. At an event to publicise the £2bn cycling strategy announced today, he said:

What we will do is create thousands of miles of protected cycle lanes – I really believe that protected cycle lanes are essential to give people the confidence they need, many people aren’t very brave or confident cyclists …

What I also want to see is more work done to get motorists to understand that we are all going to be sharing the roads, going to be sharing it with cyclists, so be respectful, be courteous.

Things have been improving but there’s still a long way to go.

The government closing its furlough scheme this autumn is a “mistake” that will drive up unemployment by 1.2 million by Christmas, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), one of the UK’s leading economics thinktanks, has warned. My colleague Richard Partington has the full story.

People should be offered accommodation outside their homes if they are asked to self-isolate by the NHS test and trace programme, a behavioural scientist has said. As PA Media reports, Susan Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London, said Britain should emulate Vietnam and offer anyone who has a positive Covid-19 test result, and their contacts, accommodation where they can isolate “for as long as it takes”.

Michie, who is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), as well as a member of the alternative group, Independent Sage, said not many people in the UK had the ability to self- isolate within their homes. Speaking at a Covid-19 briefing for the Royal Society of Medicine, in response to a question about how people could be encouraged to cooperate with test and trace, she said:

If you’re asking people to shop on their friends, if you like, and their friends will then be asked to isolate for two weeks – that could lose them an enormous amount of money and in a situation where it may be very difficult in terms of their accommodation.

Anyway, so you’re putting them in a situation where they may feel exceptionally guilty and a lot of people won’t do that.

It is not enough just to motivate people, it’s not enough just to tell people what to do. You need to be able to give them the social and material context in which they can do it.

So if we want people to quarantine for two weeks voluntarily and because they’ve been in contact with somebody else and they do need to have financial security.

And secondly, how many people in this country have got houses where they can really isolate within their house? Not many.

[In] other countries – for example Vietnam, who have had no deaths at the last time I heard – as soon as somebody gets a positive test result, they and their contacts are offered accommodation, and looked after for as long as it takes.

Now we are not a poor country compared to Vietnam. Vietnam can do it. We can do it.

And, while we are on the subject of coronavirus figures, the tables here, on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s website, provide a good guide to how the situation in the UK compares with the situation in EU countries.

On the new cases measures, there are several countries doing a lot worse than the UK. For example, Spain has its 14-day cumulative number for new cases running at 47.2 per 100,000, while in the UK it is 15 per 100,000.

But on deaths (a lagging indicator, because people who do die from coronavirus tend to die several weeks after getting infected), only two countries are doing worse than the UK. Its 14-day cumulative number of deaths is running at 1.4 per 100,000. The only countries doing worse are Sweden and Romania, both on 1.6 per 100,000.

The UK has recorded a further 119 coronavirus deaths, according to today’s update on the official government dashboard, taking the official headline total to 45,878.

This is a Public Health England figure for the UK as a whole. But, confusingly, the Department of Health and Social Care has given up publishing this figure as part of its only daily update, because it no longer views it as reliable.

The PHE figure is suspect because it includes people in England who tested positive for coronavirus and died – even if they died of something else.

But the main problem with the headline total is that it is an underestimate because it does not include people who died from coronavirus without testing positive. When these deaths are included, total UK coronavirus deaths are more than 55,000.

At her news conference Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said that she was trying to get all four nations of the UK to commit to aiming to eliminate coronavirus. (See 1.04pm.) This is effectively the “Zero Covid” approach (pdf) being advocated by the Independent Sage group of scientists. Independent Sage says Scotland and Northern Ireland are on course to eliminate the virus. In an editorial today the Guardian sides with Sturgeon, and says England and Wales should try this approach too.

In a series of posts on Twitter Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University and a Scottish government adviser on coronavirus, explains the difference between elimination and eradication.

At her news conference Sturgeon said that she was opposed to the idea that it would be acceptable to allow coronavirus to continue to exist and spread at a relatively low level in the community. This is consistent with what the Scottish government has always said. In its original coronavirus exit strategy published in April, the Scottish government said:

We are clear that an assumption that there is a proportion or section of the population that it is safe or acceptable to allow to be infected forms no part of the Scottish government’s policy or approach.

Sturgeon clearly thinks that the UK government has a different approach, and that it is easing lockdown more quickly because it does believe a certain level of coronavirus is tolerable. By and large Westminster ministers have avoided saying this explicitly (because an “acceptable” level of coronavirus implies an acceptable coronavirus death toll). But the UK government’s recovery strategy (pdf) published in May did talk about reducing the virus to “manageable levels” as a goal, and Sridhar points out that another UK government paper (pdf) implied 1,000 cases a day would be an “acceptable” rate of incidence. (New case numbers have been below that level for more than a month now.)

Although the House of Commons is in recess, the House of Lords is still sitting, and peers spoke this afternoon in a private notice question (PNQ) about quarantine, and about support for people forced to stay away from work.

As HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports here, Lady Buscombe, a Conservative, angered Labour by arguing that people who took the risk of booking a holiday abroad should not be entitled to help from the taxpayer. Buscombe said:

The trouble with Labour and the Liberal Democrats is they love spending other people’s money. They complain about austerity and then want to spend yet more of taxpayers’ money on people who have chosen to take risks by travelling mostly for pleasure in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.

Lady Vere, the transport minister, was responding to the PNQ on behalf of the government. So far, in relation to Spain, the government is rejecting calls for the Canary and Balearic islands to get an exemption from the quarantine rule, but Vere said the idea of regional quarantine exemptions had not been ruled out for the future. She told peers:

For the time being we are taking the approach by country for border measures. But it is the case that it could be that we could put them in place for regions in the future. We are not there yet, but we are certainly looking at it because it is an appropriate consideration.

Health officials in Oldham are introducing new restrictions, starting immediately, after the town reported a surge in coronavirus cases, PA Media reports. The new guidance, set to last two weeks, aims to halt the spread of the virus and avoid a local lockdown, as seen in Leicester.

The borough’s 235,000 residents are being asked not to have social visitors to their home and to keep 2 metres apart from friends and family when seeing them outside.

Care homes will not relax restrictions on visiting, which were recently lifted, and those people who are shielding will be asked to shield for another two weeks from Friday 31 July.

Oldham has reccorded 119 cases in the seven days to July 25, compared with 26 in the week ending 17 July. This means a current rate of 50.2 positive tests per 100,000, compared with 10.2 per 100,000 the week before.

UK retailers enjoyed their best sales in more than a year following the reopening of non-essential stores in mid-June, according to the latest snapshot of spending from the CBI. My colleague Larry Elliott has the full story here.

Although NHS England has recorded 12 further coronavirus deaths today (see 2.23pm), there have been no further deaths in Scotland (details here), in Wales (details here) or in Northern Ireland (details here).

NHS England has record a further 12 coronavirus hospital deaths. The full details are here.