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UK Covid live news: alert level drops from 5 down to 4 as threat of NHS being overwhelmed reduces

Latest updates: UK medical officers agree to reduce Covid threat level but stress health services remains under severe pressure
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Where there are persistently empty shops, blighting local areas and not being filled, we should give local councils the power to step in – just as they can with persistently empty homes already.
40% of small businesses say that making vacant units available for rent is one of the biggest changes that should be made to help their high street. Where these are not coming back into use via the market, we would create an ‘Empty Shop Order’, giving local councils the power to take them over, bring them back into use and offer them to local businesses or other enterprises.
Anneliese Dodds says Labour will oppose any “immediate” changes to corporation tax
In her Q&A after speaking to UCL @glo_pro she said:
“If government is saying that they will be immediately imposing tax changes on the UK I do think that’s the wrong decision”
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which produces its own estimates for R, the reproduction number, thinks it is starting to nudge up. It estimates that R for the UK is now between 0.9 and 1, up from between 0.8 and 0.9.
The UK government publishes its own figure (the official figure) every Friday. Currently it puts the UK figure at between 0.6 and 0.9.
OUT NOW: our new weekly #NIESRCovidTracker suggests that the R number is starting to move up to 0.9 – 1.0 from a range of 0.8 – 0.9 where it had been since mid-Jan, with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Yorkshire & the Humber above 1.0
Here in fullhttps://t.co/1Ajz9WKhma

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