Join us for the latest on the coronavirus pandemic tomorrow.

Updates today were brought to you by Alex Kleiderman, Alex Therrien, Becky Morton, Emma Owen, Gavin Stamp, George Bowden, Claire Heald, Joshua Nevett, Kate Whannel, Martha Buckley and Thomas Poole.

We're going to bring our live coverage to an end shortly.

But first a round-up of today's developments from the UK and around the world.

• MPs voted for the UK government's tougher Covid tiers system for England by 291 votes to 78
• It means new tier restrictions will replace the current lockdown at midnight
• But a sizeable Conservative rebellion illustrated unhappiness about the measures in Parliament - Labour mostly abstained from the vote, though some of its MPs voted against it
• Debenhams department stores are set to close after the failure of last-ditch efforts to rescue the ailing UK chain which has been hit by tough trading during the pandemic
• The UK government rejects the suggestion there are plans to introduce a "vaccine passport" to give people access hospitality venues once a vaccine becomes available
• Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton goes into self-isolation for 10 days after returning a positive Covid result
• The Netherlands makes it compulsory to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces - one of the last European nations to do so
• Scott Atlas, US President Donald Trump's controversial special adviser on coronavirus, resigns
• There have been more than 63.5m Covid cases and 1.47m deaths worldwide, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University

Image source, Getty Images

Several families from California are suing the state, alleging it failed to provide "basic educational equality" for students working remotely by not providing the equipment, guidance or support that low-income families need to educate their children from home.

According to the suit, families have been forced to foot the bill for necessary school supplies or their children must do without.

"Parents and grandparents have had to become tutors, counsellors, child-minders, and computer technicians, and they have had to find a way to pay for what are now basic school supplies — laptop/tablets, paper, printing, and internet access,” the lawsuit, filed in Alameda Superior Court, said.

Meanwhile testing firm NWEA has analysed millions of US students who have been working remotely, finding a noticeable drop in maths ability but English remaining much the same.

Some fascinating colour from Nick Watt, BBC Newsnight's political editor, about the mood music in Downing Street.

He says there is a feeling in government that they avoided a much larger revolt but, as Boris Johnson's reported actions show, there were real nerves in No 10 about the outcome.

A government spokesman welcomed MPs voting to approve the new tiered system to replace the national lockdown in England and said ministers would work with those who expressed concerns.

He said: "We welcome tonight's vote which endorses our winter plan, brings an end to the national restrictions and returns England to a tiered system.

"This will help to safeguard the gains made during the past month and keep the virus under control.

"We will continue to work with MPs who have expressed concerns in recent days."

Helen Catt
Political correspondent

It does look like a sizeable Conservative rebellion - but we know that a handful of Labour MPs were going to break their whip to abstain and vote against too.

We need to wait for the breakdown to come in to see just how many were Labour MPs.

But the anticipation is there won't be too many of those - and so it does look like it is going to be quite a sizeable rebellion for the government here.

It will take a while for the breakdown of tonight's vote to be released.

The details of who voted for and against will appear first on Parliament's website. , external

Some of the 78 who opposed the new tiers will have been from Labour, while most of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party are also thought to have voted against.

We've also been looking out for the number of Tory MPs who did not vote at all, some of them lodging a protest this way.

Some have suggested this figure could be higher than expected.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

News that tests are to be sent to care homes to allow relatives to visit over Christmas will be welcome for those in England who have waited a long time to visit loved ones and friends inside care homes, rather than trying to communicate through windows or on videolinks.

But therein lies the problem. The danger is that expectations will be raised of visits before Christmas which cannot all be fulfilled.

The biggest care home operators have been sent rapid testing kits but the smaller providers have not yet heard details about how they can obtain them. One told me that, while welcoming the initiative, he was concerned at the level of administration which would be required to book in visits and organise the testing and this might mean taking on more staff.

Some doubts have been raised about the effectiveness of the rapid testing technology with a relatively high number of false negatives if administered by less trained staff.

The scheme will not be fully rolled out by Christmas but officials hope it will be more accessible to a wider public early in the new year.

Labour are suggesting 56 Tory MPs voted against the government, which would be the biggest rebellion by far of Boris Johnson's premiership.

But we must stress this has not been confirmed yet.

The government has won by 291 votes to 78.

This means the new system of tiered restrictions across England will come into force from midnight.

But it is clear there was a substantial rebellion by Tory MPs.

We will get the details of who voted against in the next half hour or so.

• Read more: MPs back England’s tougher coronavirus tier system

Once the voting has finished, a vote teller from the winning side will come to the Despatch Boxes at the centre of the Commons chamber to announce the result.

Helen Catt
Political correspondent

A rebellion on the scale needed to defeat these measures is pretty inconceivable; assuming most Labour MPs do abstain as instructed, around 180 Tory MPs would need to vote against the government.

There are some key numbers to watch out for though: 35 Conservative MPs rebelled against the national lockdown. Fewer than this - or even around this level - and the government should be pretty relieved.

If 40 MPs vote against the restrictions, that would be the equivalent of Boris Johnson's majority being wiped out. Anything more than 44 MPs would be Boris Johnson's biggest rebellion to date.

Seventy Tory MPs signed a letter to the prime minister opposing the restrictions last month. You wouldn't expect all of those to go on to rebel but anything approaching that number would be bad news for Downing Street.

After several hours of impassioned debate, MPs are now voting on the government's proposed new tiered coronavirus restrictions for England.

Voting takes place in person and there is a pass-reader system in place, allowing four MPs to vote at the same time while maintaining social-distancing, according to, external Parliament's website.

The process takes around 10 minutes.

Image source, UK Parliament

Health Secretary Matt Hancock who is closing the debate for the government, says his own step-grandfather died with coronavirus last month after catching the virus in Liverpool.

"This means more to me than I can say," he says. "My step-grandfather Derek caught coronavirus in Liverpool and on 18 November he died.

He adds: "We've lost a loving husband, a father and a grandfather to this awful disease. So from the bottom of my heart I want to say thank you to everyone in Liverpool for getting this virus under control. It's down by four-fifths in Liverpool.

"That's what we can do if we work together in the spirit of common humanity. We've got to beat this, and we've got to beat this together."

Summing up for Labour, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told MPs there had been a "good debate" with some frustration on both sides of the Commons.

He said the government could have allowed MPs to amend more detailed legislation, rather than simply vote yes or no on the tier system.

"Fundamentally we support public health restrictions, but you cannot introduce public health restrictions without giving our businesses the support to survive, and that is our difference here tonight," he said.

Helen Catt
Political correspondent

It seems clear from what's been said this afternoon that there is a lot of expectation around that first review of the tiers, scheduled for 16 December.

Sir Keir Starmer said he thought it was "highly unlikely" anything much would change in the next two weeks.

Boris Johnson's talk of "granularity" though seems to have raised hopes among some backbenchers that some areas with lower infection rates could be "split off" from their current higher tiers.

That argument has already been made pretty forcefully though and hasn't seen any alteration in the tier allocations that come in tonight.

Can enough happen in a fortnight to change that?

As the Covid debate nears its end in Parliament, Boris Johnson has been appealing to Conservative MPs to back the government in the vote coming up.

In a virtual meeting on Zoom, he made a plea for unity, according to the BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson.

The PM did not offer any fresh concessions about which areas would be put into the two highest tiers of restrictions.

Mr Johnson, our correspondent said, was pressed about "how genuine" his promised review of the tiers on 16 December would be.

A charity set up by the Daily Mail to buy protective equipment for NHS staff donated 100,000 face masks suspected of being made by workers in a controversial Chinese labour programme.

The masks were flown in from China by the paper's Mail Force campaign, which was launched in April to buy PPE.

They were bought from Medwell Medical Products, a firm suspected of using Uighur Muslims in the labour scheme.

Mail Force said it had been unaware of allegations about Medwell at the time.

A spokesperson for the charity said: "The masks in question represent 0.2% of the 42 million items of PPE we delivered to the UK. We are implacably opposed to forced labour of any kind."

Read more here.

Relatives of care home residents in England will be able to visit them over the Christmas period so long as they test negative for coronavirus, the government has said.

The Department of Health and Social Care says more than a million tests will be sent to providers responsible for the 385 biggest care homes to enable safe indoor visits.

Up to two visitors per resident will be able to make two visits a week.

Officials are urging visitors to minimise contact as much as possible and wear the free personal protective equipment that will be supplied.

But some councils, including Sheffield and Liverpool, are reported to have questioned the accuracy of the tests being provided - lateral flow tests, which give rapid results - and to have said they won't allow providers in their areas to use them.

It means alternative testing arrangements will need to be made in some areas before families can see relatives.

As we reported earlier, 603 more people have died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, taking total to 59,051, the government has said.

But as these graphs show, the daily death rate appears to be stabilising while the number of daily cases continues to fall.