good afternoon. there's mounting pressure on the government to close all schools in england for face—to—face teaching for two weeks after the christmas holiday. teaching unions say a move to home learning for most children is necessary to curb the spread of coronavirus. one union has described it as "the only sensible and credible option". it comes after the education secretary said all london primaries would remain shut on monday, rather than only those in some boroughs. here's our education

correspondent dan johnson. in liverpool, teachers are already at the head of the queue for tests, but there are more voices saying schools should not reopen on monday. it seems to me to be inexplicable the government is getting it so badly wrong. we said all schools should be close for the first two macro weeks and we regret to have to say that. but our fear is if we do not do something now they will have to be closed for a longer period later this month. secondary schools will phase the return from the 11th of january with year groups facing exams this summer in first. the government said the majority of primary schools would take children back on monday accepting virus hotspots in the south—east. last night, it had to reverse the patchwork approach in london so all the capital's primaries will close.

it is good they are safeguarding teachers but school is the best place for them to be. they need to be back. the government should have done this a long time ago. a harder lockdown sooner. we should have been stricter sooner. my wife is a key worker and it means we have no choice but to send our son to school, whether it is the right thing or not, or how safe that will be is where our concern is, we do not have another option for childcare, and we have to put him in but at what risk? there is a lot for the government to consider. the new strain, rising transmission rates, pressure on the nhs and demographics in different communities. it always said keeping children of school is a last resort but there is pressure to extend closures beyond london and parts of the south—east and teachers are calling for decisions to be made quickly and clearly. we appreciate it isa

quickly and clearly. we appreciate it is a fast moving situation. the government must be getting different health advice all the time, but schools need to plan. we will be opening for quite a few pupils next week and we will need staff to deliver to vulnerable pupils, pupils without decent internet access, pupils with educational needs and delivering quality online learning, which takes time, and this decision could have been made two weeks ago. teaching unions are discussing the situation and said —— one said it wasn't safe for staff to be back next week. and there are practical difficulties with learning from home, a reality for children in the next fortnight, possibly longer. our health correspondent katharine da costa is here. would closing all schools make a difference?

government advisers on the sage committee previously said of restrictions like closing hospitality and nonessential shops we re hospitality and nonessential shops were not enough to get on top of the virus, tougher measures like closing schools may have to be considered. the r number number is above one which means the epidemic is growing and research found the fastest spreading variant tripled in england's lockdown in november. while there has been an increase in infections among secondary children, some experts say could be spreading in the community rather than schools, and they are not seeing the same increase in primary aged children. there is research to better understand the role children play in spreading the virus, but no suggestion the new variant causes more serious illness. in the meantime, other measures to reduce school transmission are being rolled out including testing and the use of face coverings. the body that advises the government on its health

programme defended its decision to delay the second day is to allow more people to get the first dose. on wednesday, it was announced two doses of the oxford and pfizer vaccines would be given up to 12 weeks apart and that has been questioned by some who say pfizer trials the two vaccines three weeks apart but today the deputy chairman of thejoint apart but today the deputy chairman of the joint committee on the vaccination and immunisation told the bbc that most protection comes from the first dose and said the first vaccine from pfizer provides 90% protection. second doses will be needed to extend protection, but he said the priority now was to vaccinate as many of the most vulnerable people as quickly as possible. thanks. the impact of coronavirus on the economy has been enormous — an estimated 1.7 million people are out of work. our business correspondent sarah corker caught up with three women who lost theirjobs earlier

in the pandemic to hear their experiences of looking forjobs. three people who all lost theirjobs because of the pandemic. olympia, rebecca and heather were facing the toughestjobs market for a generation. we've got no money coming in. i first met olympia and herfamily back in may. she was touring as part of a circus troupe when the first lockdown restrictions came in, and they were stranded on morecambe seafront for months. it's fear. that i might not ever be able to do what i love again, which is perform in the circus, because we might not recover. since then, things have got better. olympia's moved in with her mum in rotherham to save money and wait until they're allowed to perform again. financially, it's been a big strain. it's been massive. five months on morecambe prom, relying on the food bank to feed you guys — what was that experience like? it was really hard.

coming to terms with the fact that i had to rely on other people to eat and to live. in west yorkshire, rebecca was finding competition for jobs fierce. she'd worked in communications at a high—street bank for a decade when she was made redundant in the summer. with every application that goes out the door, it does kind of chip away at your confidence and how you feel. it's already dog eat dog. it's only going to get worse. three months on, she's now working for a shed company. and it's been really busy, hasn't it? it's completely booming, at the minute, is the shed industry, believe it or not. it's a completely new world for me. it's a million miles away from banking. what's it like, after so many months not working, finally having a regular wage again? it was a massive confidence boost. there's no shame in saying that although, yes, you have your friends and family and things, when you have a job, you feel like you have purpose. some of those in their 50s and 60s,

like heatherfrom prestwich, near manchester, felt they were being overlooked. the best one is, "you're overqualified." which doesn't make any sense to me, because if you're qualified to this level, then you can do anyjob up until that level. heather is still on the job hunt, but is enjoying having more time exercising in the local park. did you think it would take this long and it would be this hard? um, yeah, basically. you know, i've been here before, in much better times. there are obviously a lot more people unemployed and, because there's more people unemployed, then there are fewerjobs at the moment, because a lot of people are on furlough, still. so, for some, the search for work continues. but the arrival of an effective vaccine has brought renewed optimism for 2021. sarah corker, bbc news. with all the sport now, here's gavin ra mjaun at the bbc sport centre. good afternoon.

fulham's premier league match at burnley tomorrow has been postponed, due to fresh covid—i9 cases at the london club. a statement said the welfare of their players, staff and their families were of paramount importance. fulham's game at tottenham on wednesday was also called off. tottenham are in action right now — more in a moment — but the club have condemned three of their players who were pictured at a large party over christmas, breaking coronavirus restrictions. erik lamela, sergio reguilon and giovani lo celso will all face disciplinary action. spurs are involved in today's early premier league game, and they are 1—0 up against leeds — harry kane scoring from the penalty spot. this is the first meeting between the sides, in any competition, for eight years. tottenham can go back into the top four with a win. the old firm derby is under way at ibrox, 50 years to the day since the stadium disaster in which 66 people lost their lives. our sports news correspondent chris mclaughlin is there. the rangers manager steven gerrard asked fans to stay

away from the ground due to the covid—i9 pandemic but the clubs are paying tribute. what's been going on there today? yes, a beautiful winter, crisp day here on the south side of glasgow, perfect for a football match, ongoing behind me here at ibrox. 0—0 heading towards half—time. also a day to remember, to remember the 66 men, women and children who came to watch this fixture 50 years ago today and lost their lives. crushed today and lost their lives. crushed to death on a stairway to the east of the stadium, a crash that left metal barriers crumpled, 200 people injured, and families up and down the country mourning and knowing their lives would never be the same. today the club director laid a wreath outside the ground and the clu b wreath outside the ground and the club captain is laying a wreath

before a minute's silence here at the stadium. steven gerard, the rangers manager, urging fans to stay away with coronavirus still dictating here. but in a city quite often divided by football, today there is unity to remember those who, 50 years ago today, came to watch this game and never made it home. thanks. england's cricketers are heading to sri lanka for their two—test series, which starts on the 14th. and there's been a really impressive performance from one player not involved in the tour. dawid malan, the world's best t20 batsman, steered hobart hurricanes to victory in australia's big bash league. he top—scored with 75, as they set melbourne stars a target of 165. the visitors fell 21 runs short.

there is more on the bbc website but for me, that is all from me for now. that's it — the next news on bbc one is at 6:00pm. bye for now. hello. you're watching the bbc news channel, it's 1.12. let's get more now on the news that the uk's largest teaching union is calling for all schools in england to close for two weeks, to try to stem the rising number of coronavirus infections. dr mike tildesley from the university of warwick is a member of the sage subgroup, the scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling, known as spi—m. the group provides advice on epidemiology and infectious disease modelling to the uk government. he told me that the picture regarding tra nsmissability and schools is still unclear. i will say that there is still an awful lot of uncertainty around this.

we are seeing a concerning rise in cases in the south—east and in greater london, in particular among secondary school age children. where we need to be a little bit careful here is we are seeing a rise in those age groups, but we aren't seeing strong evidence of strong transmission within a school environment. but it is certainly very concerning, these parts of the country where the new variant has taken hold more, we see a much stronger spread, which is why this action of school closures is being targeted on those regions. interestingly, if we look at cases in primary schools, we are not finding similar evidence of a significant growth in cases amongst primary age children, even in those parts of the country that are more affected by the new variant, so this is why i am still sort of pushing back against the idea of closing schools across the country, because the evidence seen in primary schools is that we aren't getting a significant increase in cases in primary school settings, despite this new variant emerging. if people, a couple of weeks down the line in london see a fall in cases, or a slowing in the rate of cases perhaps is more realistic,

they might reach the conclusion that, oh, well, shutting the schools reduces the transmissibility and therefore that's what we should do. that's the risk, isn't it? to be honest, this is what concerns me. i'm an epidemiologist and so i understand the situation. we have a new variant that is circulating readily, particularly in greater london and the south—east. we need to drive the r number below one and of course if we shut schools, that could drive the r number below one and it may be the conclusion that we need to keep schools closed. but we know that long—term school closure is damaging for children, so we do need an alternative. this two—week closure, really the government need to use that time to get this mass testing process working, get it rolled out to secondary schools.

it's a huge undertaking, but it does need to be done so that these schools can ultimately open safely, despite this rise in cases. you can understand teachers‘ and parents‘ point of view saying that, everybody did work so hard to come up with these extraordinarily complicated plans to avoid groups of children bumping into each other in corridors, to stagger class times. meal times, pick up times, drop off times. and yet, despite all this, all this enormous effort, still, perhaps because of this new variant, the disease is, bluntly, running riot. i will say that the schools have done incredible work to put the systems in place. and it was working, the evidence says it was working. unfortunately, this new variant has emerged and we have seen a rise in cases. it is important to state that, yes, we are seeing a rise in cases among school—age children. but if we look at december, when the lockdown was lifted, we are seeing a similar rise throughout the community, so yes,

there is a rise among school—age children, but there is a rise across age groups throughout the community, so it doesn't mean that those measures that will put in place in schools weren't working, but unfortunately, we are now dealing with a new variant which is more transmissible. are more children falling ill than with the original covid, if i can call it original. are more children falling ill with the new variant or do we just not know at this stage? i think we still have quite a lot of uncertainty around that. there are some suggestions that may be children are getting slightly stronger symptoms with the new variant, but it is still early days. we will learn a lot more over the next few weeks about this. we know it is more transmissible, overall, we don't believe that particularly people are getting stronger symptoms and of course the important thing is that we believe the vaccine will still be effective. so that's key for the long term but in the short term, we need to do what we can, particularly in the south—east, to bring the r number below one. a number of hospitals across the uk

are now facing a worse situation than at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic last year that's according to the president of the royal college of physicians. professor andrew goddard says nhs staff are braced for a difficult few months as a result of the new variant of the virus. our health reporter jim reed has more. the pressure on hospitals in parts of the country shows no sign of easing off. staff are tired, some wards are at the limit of their capacity. all hospitals that haven't had the big pressures that they have had in the south—east and london and south wales should expect that it is going to come their way. this new variant is definitely more infectious and is spreading across the whole of the country. it seems very likely that we will see more and more cases, whenever people work in the uk, and we need to be prepared for that. another 53,285 virus cases were recorded across the uk yesterday. 616 people lost their lives to the virus. in london, the nightingale hospital

is now being readied for action. it is thought it will soon start to take non—covid patients or those recovering from the disease. vaccinations are seen as the way out of this crisis. 1 million doses of the pfizer biontech jab have been delivered. but gps are being asked to postpone a second booster shot, giving it up to three months, rather than three weeks to roll it out more quickly. senior doctors say one dose is still effective, but for some, any delay to that booster, is concerning. darren, pharmacy technician, suffers from a serious breathing condition and had his first vaccine dose on boxing day. it would be devastating, another three months, when you are so close. you think, oh, life and... if that's put off another three months, it's a huge impact. huge. the government says tens of millions

of doses of at least two covid vaccines will be available by the spring. getting those to the people who need them the most will be crucial, as the nhs fights the winter wave of this pandemic. jim reed, bbc news. earlier i spoke to dr ganesh suntharalingam, an intensive care consultant working in london, and outgoing president of the intensive care society. i asked him for his assesment of the current situation for uk hospitals. i would agree with our colleagues from the royal college of physicians, actually. hospitals are, themselves, are under big strain and in some cases more than in march and april and that is echoed in intensive care units. we see the sicker patients, there are small numbers of intensive care beds and general beds, so we see the sort of apex of the pyramid, as it were. so, some hospitals up to a third of their beds, hospital wide, are filled with covid and intensive care sort of mirroring and taking that further, we are seeing 40% or up to two thirds of beds being occupied by covid patients and bearing in mind, these are beds that have

already been expanded, as we are talking about intensive care units operating at up to twice more of their usual capacity, which actually is a big stress on staff. we can have more beds, we can buy more equipment and all that has been done during the year, but what we can't do is double the number of staff because they take years to train. so they are operating in ratios which are well above what they normally do which does have its own applications. and many of the staff presumably will have worked without significant breaks for the best part of ten months, now. just in terms of the pressures, i was hearing one doctor interviewed talking about where you might have had a nurse dealing with one patient, they might now be dealing with for patient simultaneously. i mean, sustaining that level of care and doing so as the numbers of infections arise and, by logical extension, people who need hospitalisation, you must worry about where the peak point comes in this particular stage in a pandemic. absolutely, it is a big concern. we are seeing, certainly, to put it into context, hospitals have been under pressure

across all four nations since september, actually. covid has never gone away during the year obviously, but from autumn onwards, hospitals, outside london and the south—east, have seen sustained pressure. we are now seeing this rise in london and the south—east and wales, which may be related to the new strain and the rate of onset is now worryingly high. if that continues, then yes, we are very concerned. i think the sort of message to the public is twofold, actually. the first thing, which might sound a bit contrary, is that what we don't want is for people to avoid coming to hospital are accessing their gp or health care, it may be that some non—urgent appointments are paused, but it's important that people refer their conditions and at least get an opinion and they might be asked to wait or it might be something urgent that needs to be dealt with. so we don't want delayed care and people's conditions getting worse. the other part of it is, although we are talking about high technology areas, very specialist nursing and it may all sound rarefied, actually, there is a direct connection between what we do in our homes and public spaces. this is an infectious disease and ultimately, the way to bring it under control is with public health measures. can i ask you about one

of the aspects which i was surprised when i heard it yesterday, and you will be able to give me an idea as to whether there is any significance to this or not. this was a nurse talking about, for the first time, seeing wards that had a number of child patients and that hadn't been the previous experience. is there any suggestion that this new variant is leading to more children being in hospital, even if their condition, thankfully, is not too serious? i can't speak directly to that. the picture in the spring was actually such that, as it coincided with a period when children's illnesses are normally quite low, heading into summer, so in fact, we had paediatric intensive care units helping out adult critical care and taking adult patients in order to relieve the pressure on others, which is very helpful. we are now in winter when paediatric units, paediatric wards, are generally quite full anyway. i can't speak directly to incidences of this in children. certainly, the patients we are seeing in the adult sector are mirroring the pattern of age and illnesses that we saw earlier in the year.

the us government's top infectious diseases expert, dr anthony fauci, has said he doesn't agree with british plans to delay giving second doses of the coronavirus vaccine from three to 12 weeks. the uk has changed its strategy, to allow more people to get the first dose of coronavirus vaccine. it follows a rapid acceleration in the spread of the virus, caused by a much more infectious variant of the disease. more than 2,500 people have attended an illegal rave in brittany, in defiance of french coronavirus restrictions. it started on new year's eve and went on for more than 30 hours. at least three police officers were injured in violent clashes with some party—goers. the prefect of brittany said officers were faced with a difficult choice between breaking up the illegal gathering and keeping everyone safe.

clearly, the organisers were prepared to resort to violence when confronted by law enforcement. when we saw that, we decided to pull them back in control the area. from ten pm on new year's eve, no vehicles able to enter the rave site. india has begun a nation—wide mock drill to test its preparedness for mass immunisation against covid—nineteen. the drill is intended to plug any gaps in logistics, facilities and training. it also comes as the indian government has approved the oxford astrazeneca vaccine for emergency use. dr lipika nanda is the vice president of multi—sectoral planning in public health from the public health foundation of india. i asked herjust how useful this drill will be for the vaccination rollout. it is going to be extremely useful and important for a country as large as india and also as diverse as india, with very different levels of public health infrastructure

in the different states. so, i think the drills are going to be extremely useful and i think it has already started. last week, there were drills in four states, which is punjab, gujarat, assam and andhra pradesh and today, i think there has been about 116 districts that have started the drills, different parts of the country. it's going to be extremely important. in the uk, we are anxious about the effectiveness and the ability to vaccinate 30 million people. india is talking about vaccinating 300 million people, in a country that is not only enormous but has some very isolated, rural communities. how is that challenge in particular going to be tackled? it is going to be very challenging and let me tell you, india is not planning to vaccinate 300 million people in one go. i think the plan is to prioritise

and look at who comes in the first category, who comes in a second category and so on and so forth. the most important is to protect our health workers and front line workers and people that are in the front line, people like the police personnel, people that are coming into close contact and interaction with people. personnel at the airports, railway stations, personnel that are very vulnerable. i think those are the people that are the most, come on the priority list and should be vaccinated first. and i think gradually... no, please continue. gradually, i think then it can be the elderly population, people with comorbidities and the general population. i don't think it is important to vaccinate 100% of the population.

so i think this is going to be the plan. the government of india has written up this plan already, the states are there, and more than 96,000 health workers have been trained in the vaccination process and you must be wondering what is happening in the mock drills. the mock drills actually are testing the storage of these vaccines, the transportations of these vaccines and the administration in terms of understanding the glitches and there is an app that the government of india has developed by the name of cowin. since the administration of this vaccine is going to be on a digital platform. so entering into the app and understanding whether people are able to use it and where are the glitches, and after the vaccination, people have to be present so that

they can be monitored for a few minutes to understand there are no adverse reactions all, kind of, to the vaccine and plus, i think these states are also testing crowd management capacities at each health centre and if there are any needs of training, any gaps in training that are necessary. today marks the 50th anniversary of the ibrox disaster, when 66 people were crushed to death leaving a football match between rangers and celtic in glasgow. it was one of scotland's worst peacetime tragedies as andrew picken reports. 1971 was only two days old when rangers met celtic at ibrox. the game was dull and many fans started leaving before late goals for either side during the last five minutes. commentator: that's as near as we'll get today! the day became infamous

for the deadly crush which developed on a stairway at the rangers end of the stadium. among the victims were five teenagers from markinch in fife, who never came home. we were all together, just joking, having a wee bit of banter. there was no animosity because they were rangers supporters and we were celtic supporters, there was nothing like that. we were pals. celtic fans peter lee and shane fenton were among those who left early that day. it wasn't until we got back to kincardine, where the supporters buses used to stop on the way back and the older boys would go into the pub for a pint or whatever, they came back out of the pub and onto the bus, telling us what they'd seen on the television, there had been an incident at ibrox, there had been fatalities at the rangers end of the ground. that was the first of us knowing about anything happening at all. the boys were among the 66 dead and 145 injured.

50 years on, modern crowd science has given us a better understanding of what went wrong. in a crowd that's packed to the levels of density that eyewitnesses were commenting on at ibrox, and on a slope, then you get the gravitational force added to the fall, and as each person falls onto others then you get a cascade dynamic. in the wake of the disaster, rangers rebuilt the stadium, making it one of the safest in europe. across scotland on january 2nd, people will mark the 50th anniversary of the ibrox disaster. andrew picken, bbc news. now it's time for a look at the weather with chris fawkes. hello there. it's going to be a cold weekend, the first weekend of 2021, thanks to north or north—easterly winds. today, we've seen a widespread frost. some of us have also seen some snowfall, particularly across eastern scotland and north—east england, and this snow is going to be pushing

southwards across other parts