is safe practice across our settings. india begins a nation—wide mock drill to test its preparedness for mass immunisation against covid—19. president trump and the election — now 11 republican senators say they will support him and object to the official results. french police shut down an illegal rave that had been under way since new year's eve with more than 2,500 partygoers. now on bbc news, robert chelsea was hit by a drunk driver, sustaining third—degree burns on over half of his body. in 2019, he became the first african—american recipient of a full—face transplant. this is i am robert. just an average person in the world is rear—ended by a drunk driver. and i said, ok, well, mr chelsea, we need to leave

now or we're both gonna die. they described exactly what happened with the accident and then i wasjust in shock. he was burned to over 75% of his body. he was almost unrecognisable. reporter: 68-year-old robert chelsea is the first african—american and the oldest person to receive a full face transplant surgery. feeling all right? what we didn't really realise what is what we were up against. facial transplantation has a lot of risks. squeeze, relax. he's notjust going to have this procedure and everything's just going to be smooth sailing.

it's good that african—american patients that suffer from major facial deformities are aware that there is an option for them. i got a phone call and it says oh, we have your dad.

we just got into the car and we rushed over there. they described exactly

what happened with the accident and then i was just in shock. yeah. one thing i like about my dad is his love for the lord. i can really lean on that. the role of faith means everything to my godfather.

we were thrilled and our prayers had been answered when he woke up, but what we didn't really realise is what we were up against. he was burned over 75% of his body, mostly upper body. he had lost his lips, a part of his nose, a part of his ear. he was almost unrecognisable. my godfather has since been through upwards to 40 surgeries. if it were me or somebody else, we would dwell on whether or not we were going to survive or dwell on how we would look. you know, he's the type of person who is always going to ask you how you're doing, even when he's sitting in pain.

we then had to wait almost two years before we received a donor.

he said, we're not going to accept the donor, and i said what, wait? let's talk about this. it was quite significant when you think about how he was going to look afterwards. there's a serious lack of donors in the black community and minority communities as it relates to the need.

my godfather had to be prepared, packed and ready to fly to boston from los angeles the next morning. you had this whole accident and then now all of a sudden you have a whole facial

transplant and go through a whole nother situation. why are you doing it? how's my friend? hanging in there, you doing good? good to see you, too, you look good. feeling all right? i realise he's doing it for health purposes. now i'm like, ok, i kind of see the benefits of it. so happy for you. the fundamental principle of facial transplant is we recover organ ‘

in our case it's the face — then we package it and cool it down so that it doesn't require as much energy when it doesn't have blood flow, and literally bring it to robert whose old scarred face is partially removed. some of the things are left behind, remaining structure of the nose, for example, remnants of lips that he had, and then the new face is essentially brought and gradually connected, the nerves, the vessels, the arteries, everything. i'm doing good, i'll be better in about 15 hours. could be 24, so i don't know. so many logistical things that we'll have to figure out. laughter. thank you. we're not going anywhere. so what we'll do is we'll probably be able to get the scalp somewhere all the way up here, maybe even a little bit back.

in this case, the donor was in another state so it required flying to recover him back. the deciding factor, how far we can travel and where the donor can be from is the time that we have between when the bloodflow through the tissue to the time when it's re—established. facial transplantation has a lot of risks. the ideal scenario is we come with the donor face and robert would be on the table with everything ready to go so the vessels would be prepared, all the nerves would be prepared. all the structures are essentially ready to be connected. welcome.

we all know about disparities in health and health delivery and it's good that african—american patients that suffer from major facial deformities are aware that there is an option for them. he came out and believe it or not he was already moving. there were already facial expressions. i really do see the same person. now, what looks really different is he has hair. it actually is funny because the next day you see the hairgrowing. it doesn't matter that it's on someone else, it just continues to do things that it does. it was probably one of the most amazing experiences i've ever seen.

i saw the picture, but to see for the first time it's like, shocking, overwhelmed, and ijust started crying. and then i had to ease myself into it. it's like you can close your eyes and say, oh, my dad looks like this that's great, and has accident was like this and it made it look like this and as soon as you open your eyes, you're like, where is your dad? he's a different man. and that man, i don't know, i'd be like hey, how are you, like, make a regular conversation with him like i don't even know him.

morning, robert!

your temperature's a little bit high, isn't it? it's not too high but it is a low—grade temperature, 99.0. all types of things are going on with this, he's a science experiment, and then all of a sudden you're wondering what is really wrong with him?

is his face really worth it? ebony hasjust been amazing. both of her parents are ill, both are elderly, and she moves from one house to the other, splitting her week. having parents that are ill and being the only child is hard. but you have to know inside your heart, you are willing to sacrifice some of your life. they sacrificed for you, are you willing to sacrifice for them?

i met robert through his tragic car accident where i pulled him from the car. ironically, that particular night, i was finishing a job and i left particularly early that day. i took a different rout than i usually took and as i was coming over the offramp, i literally thought a missile came across the freeway, so i pulled forward, where i saw the explosion and the fire, pulled up to it and ran to the first vehicle. i noticed that it was fully engulfed in flames and i couldn't see anything inside so i ran to the other vehicle that was in front of it. saw the driver, passed out drunk. window was broken but i could smell the alcohol

and he was snoring so i'm like, he's ok, so i went back to the other vehicle. then, that's when i saw robert chelsea, on fire, flailing around, screaming. i did pull him out, he fell on top of me, he said, "what happened?" i said, "a vehicle hit you." he said, robert's — this is one of the things that remains in my mind, robert's first words to me were, "how is the other driver?" "is he 0k?" and i said, "yes sir, he's fine." and i tried to get him to move and he screamed because his skin was completely melted and i've said, we need to leave now or we're both gonna die. then as soon as we got to my truck, his fuel tank exploded, the vehicle popped up in the air, about 16 feet in the air. there were actually marks on the top of the freeway wall from his tires. pretty traumatic for robert. robert, you want to say grace? i have been blessed to have

been introduced to robert. robert and i have become very, very close friends. when do you have to go back? did it help? good. i've explained this to you before, but your faith gives me tremendous strength.

yeah, it was receding but you had hair. it was joyful, i was very happy, and ijust,

all the people around and just finally, i accomplished getting my high school diploma, even though i got late, i still succeeded. you can never be too old to finish getting your diploma. even today, a year later, easing in is still a process for me but i'm getting much better than i was before. robert's transplant surgery was over a year ago and due to the coronavirus restrictions on travel, we postponed his

in—person visits for a number of months. a year out, i think robert is doing great. he is progressing well from the transplant standpoint. i think for him, the biggest issue is adjustment of his daily life to the new routine. the overarching problem that we are trying to avoid is rejection. if a patient develops the rejection, the body essentially is trying to get rid of tissues that it recognises at the given time as foreign. we need to open up the eyes a bit, huh? that would be better, wouldn't it? there are things we could do, surgically, to make things better, but we don't have to. everything kind of sagged down by gravity and by the fact that the new face is not as strongly connected to the bone and i would have to open up the entire incision all around, so all the way around your

head, all the way down to the neck, and then we would have to lift things up, and suspend them. this is completely elective, so it doesn't have to happen next month or tomorrow. the nerves are reconnected but your brain is learning which ones are supposed to be controlled by what, and trying to differentiate movements with help of speech therapy will help. you will still be getting better, there's another year that we know our patients are getting fairly dramatically better. and then at about two years from the surgery, that's where it plateaus. robert is a unique man. he is very spiritual, thoughtful, he really believes in god's plan for him.

we'll keep chatting, all right?

it looks as if the cold weather is with us for a few days yet, which means that the showers, when they come along, are falling as snow. mostly over the hills, but at lower levels as well. and ice becomes more of an issue, of course, after dark and when the surfaces are below freezing. and they could well be quite damp the surfaces where we have seen the frequent showers today — across northern and eastern scotland, northern england, wales, the midlands, southern and western parts of england, too. but we'll start to pick up some showers elsewhere, as well, because temperatures have barely risen 3 or 4 degrees above freezing by day. 0bviously, overnight they will plunge below freezing quite quickly once again. and the showers just keep coming onto those surfaces, and so damp surfaces with temperatures below freezing means ice is a real risk. and it'll be another harsh frost under the clearer skies across north—western areas overnight. the frost a little less harsh further south,

but nevertheless still a frost, still a cold start as we move into sunday. slight difference is that high pressure builds towards the north on sunday, so we pick up more of a north—easterly as opposed to the more northerly wind we've had today so there will be a difference in the distribution of the showers. one or two may actually get across to western scotland, some getting across the higher ground in northern england, and more potentially for east anglia and the south—east — of rain and sleet mostly but some snow certainly possible over the hills because it is another cold day after a cold start. with more of a wind, quite a bracing wind starting to pick up through sunday and monday. so although temperatures will reach 3—5 degrees above freezing, it will feel colder, particularly in the south, with those winds. further north and west, more sunshine under that area of high pressure, but equally a hard frost, some patchy fog. as i say, that set—up stays with us through monday and tuesday. that strong east, north—easterly wind with us. in fact, something a little more prolonged, potentially, rain and sleet—wise across southern and eastern areas, the channel

islands as well on monday. again, with the intensity, it could bring the snow down to relatively low levels. there'll be a scattering of snow showers or wintry showers elsewhere coming in off the north sea. so, the better, drier, brighter weather will be further north and west, but it is going to feel cold even in that sunshine and notably so with that brisk wind in eastern and southern areas. but perhaps something a little bit more unsettled wednesday and thursday. that's one we're watching. as ever, the warnings are on the website.

a major revolt by teaching unions over government plans to reopen primary schools in england on monday. they say fears over the spread of the new variant of coronavirus means online learning is "the only sensible and credible option". we don't think it's safe. we think there should be a period of closure to get those cases down, to make sure that they've fallen well below where they were before christmas. hospitals receive stocks of the second coronavirus vaccine approved for use in the uk. french police finally shut down an illegal new year's eve rave, as 2,500 people gather, breaking coronavirus rules. and at the old firm derby, remembering the 66 fans who died