If you’re just joining us, here are some of the main coronavirus stories so far today:

• As people's immunity to Covid-19 is boosted by vaccines and exposure, the virus could resemble the common cold by spring next year, a leading expert has said

• Official estimates of life expectancy in the UK have fallen for men for the first time in 40 years. These figures are based on death rates in the last three years and so have been heavily affected by the pandemic
• People are being evicted from their homes over rent arrears built up during the pandemic, an investigation has found, despite the government saying no-one should lose their home as a result of the crisis
• Around five million people in the UK have been invited to have the Covid vaccine but have not yet had the first dose, prompting questions about how they can be persuaded
• US drug regulators have approved Pfizer booster vaccines for people over 65 if they had their last shot at least six months ago
• It comes as President Joe Biden pledged that the US would donate 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to developing nations from next year
• Uganda wants to vaccinate at least six million people against Covid - more than 10% of its population - by the end of the year before schools can re-open
• A seven-day lockdown in New South Wales was triggered after a makeup artist on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! contracted Covid-19 and allegedly visited a number of establishments in New South Wales without checking in or using a QR code

Image source, Getty Images

It may not be coronavirus, but it is linked to what's happened in the past 18 months.

If you've gone out recently or got on public transport, you've probably heard a lot more sniffles around.

Or maybe you've been ill and agree with people saying that what's going around right now is "the worst cold ever".

"We've actually been seeing a rise in the number of coughs and colds and viral infections," says Dr Philippa Kaye, a GP based in London.

That's because people are now mixing more, she explains.

"During those first lockdowns, we saw numbers of other [non-Covid] infections fall. We think that that was primarily due to the restrictions on meeting up."

So while the lockdown rules were designed to stop Covid spreading, they also stopped other viruses moving between people too.

Now we're going out, meeting with friends and getting on public transport again, the common cold spreads again.

Read more here.

Image source, Reuters

A man suspected of shooting dead a cashier at a German petrol station has been linked to Covid-19 conspiracy theorists and the far right.

The cashier, a 20-year-old student employee, was shot after a row over face masks, in what is thought to be the first killing linked to German Covid rules.

Researchers believe the suspect, named only as Mario N, was a far-right supporter and Covid denier.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the "heinous" killing.

Prosecutors said the killer had initially tried to buy beer at the petrol station in the western town of Idar-Oberstein on Saturday, but left after the cashier refused to serve him as he was without a mask.

An hour and a half later the man came back, this time wearing a mask. He got into another argument, pulled down his mask and shot the cashier in the head.

The 49-year-old suspect handed himself in to police on Sunday. The victim has not been named.

The shooting, which came days before Germans are due to vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday, has prompted widespread shock and condemnation.

Read more here.

Image source, KEABETSOE DIKGOLE

As the government prepares to launch a consultation on flexible working this week, one City boss has voiced his misgivings over the proposals.

Andrew Monk, chief executive of investment firm VSA Capital, which employs about 20 people in the City of London, tells the BBC that people "abuse" being able to work from home and are less productive, at least in financial services.

He argues that many who ask for flexible working want to work part-time but on a full-time salary.

Monk tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Pretty much we are all back at work, because I think that's what we need to be in our particular industry," he says.

"Obviously it varies from industry to industry, but in financial services it's more important to be in the office because its a very live industry."

Some big firms, including accountancy giants PwC and Deloitte, have embraced flexible working.

However, some big City firms, such as Goldman Sachs, are opposed to working from home, with its boss David Solomon labelling it as an "aberration".

The government says that allowing flexible working makes businesses more productive.

It is proposing that from the first day of employment new starters can request flexible working, rather than having to wait at least six months, as is the case at the moment.

You can read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Food industry bodies have warned of panic-buying this Christmas unless action is taken to address labour shortages.

The National Farmers' Union called for an emergency visa to allow firms to recruit from outside the UK.

UK farmers, hauliers and shops have been struggling with shortages that have been made worse by Covid and Brexit.

The government said that the UK has a "highly resilient food supply chain".

Read more.

Image source, Getty Images

US drug regulators have approved Pfizer booster vaccines for people over 65 if they had their last shot at least six months ago.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also authorised adults at higher risk of severe illness and who work in front-line jobs to get the booster jab.

It means tens of millions of Americans are now eligible for their third shot.

However, the boosters still need approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Independent panels from the CDC are holding meetings on Wednesday and Thursday and are expected to endorse the move quickly, US media reports.

The panels' decisions will include recommendations on who qualifies as high risk, and which frontline workers should be eligible.

The FDA move is a victory for President Joe Biden, who had promised that booster vaccines would be available from this month as long as they received approval from the FDA and CDC.

Read more here.

Image source, EPA

The reality TV programme I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! is facing criticism after a crew member contracted Covid-19, sending thousands of Australians into lockdown.

The make-up artist allegedly visited a number of establishments in the state of New South Wales without checking in or using a QR code.

She has been charged with multiple breaches of public health orders.

The incident has raised questions over the filming of shows in the area.

The 31-year-old woman, who has not been identified, flew to Ballina from Sydney on Saturday under an exemption, external, according to ABC News. She then visited a number of locations in the north of the state over the weekend.

ITV, which makes the programme, told the news outlet that the crew member was "fully vaccinated and was wearing PPE while at work". It added that all of her close contacts were now in isolation.

But police said that by attending several businesses and venues in Byron Bay and Kingscliff, she had breached the conditions of her work-related travel exemption.

Australia has strict border restrictions, even between states, with many people cut off from seeing loved ones.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Face masks have been reintroduced at a school in England following a spike in cases, a headteacher has said.

Giselle Lynch, head teacher at St Augustine of Canterbury High School in St Helens, told BBC Radio 5 Live testing had revealed one positive case when her school re-opened on 2 September.

“We retested them on Tuesday 7 September and we had no positives – but by Friday we started getting positives being reported by parents and by the Monday it was out of control, it was just ridiculous – we’re talking 50 cases,” she says.

“So, that day, I made the decision to close the school for a deep clean and to reintroduce face masks – and increase the amount of testing we do."

She says that after bringing back face coverings, hand sanitisers, one-way systems and controlled lunch breaks, the number of cases seem to be levelling out.

“We are now telling parents that if one child has it they must keep their other children off too...

“We are running online sessions again too so pupils can keep on top of things.”

The Department for Education said more than 91% of school children were back in the classroom last week.

Analysis: Subsequent Covid infections likely to be milderpublished at 10:51 British Summer Time 23 September 2021

10:51 BST 23 September 2021

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Covid is on its way to becoming like the common cold, according to two leading experts, Oxford University’s Prof Sir John Bell and Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, who designed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

For a virus that has caused such devastation, that may seem like a bold claim. But what past pandemics show is that the virus comes in waves. The initial waves are big, causing a huge amount of serious illness, but then get smaller and smaller.

This is not because the virus disappears, but because the immunity we have built up lessens its impact. The illnesses caused are less severe even though we get infected repeatedly.

The vaccines that have been developed have basically given our immune systems a head start, teaching them how to fight off the virus.

The protection against infection may wane over time, but it remains stronger against serious illness.

That means while we face repeated infections in the future, they are likely to be milder for most and in the process keep our immune systems topped up.

As we see with other viruses, older people and those with compromised immune systems will remain at greater risk. That is why they are likely to be offered repeat vaccinations in future years.

This does not mean there will be no Covid deaths in the future – a bad flu winter can still claim 25,000 lives – but instead it will reach a level that society considers acceptable.

The big question is just how quickly we get there.

Patience Atuhaire
BBC News, Kampala

Image source, AFP

Uganda is aiming to vaccinate at least six million people against Covid - more than 10% of its population - by the end of the year before schools can re-open.

About 4.8 million of these are categorised as high priority, and they include health workers, teachers, students aged 18 and above, and security personnel.

The education sector will then reopen in January, except for universities and other higher education institutions, which have been cleared to re-open from 1 November.

So far, 600,000 people have been fully vaccinated since the first doses arrived in March - representing just over 1% of the population.

Schools were first closed in March last year and re-opened in phases later in the year. They were however closed again in June this year when the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit the country.

In a televised national address on Wednesday, President Yoweri Museveni said there were about 2.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses available in the country at the moment, with an estimated 10 million more expected to arrive in the coming months.

The president has directed all local district leaders to mobilise the public to get vaccinated, threatening them with dismissal if any vaccines expire on their watch.

Robert Cuffe
BBC head of statistics

Official estimates of life expectancy in the UK fell for men for the first time in 40 years, according to figures published today by the ONS.

Life expectancy at birth in the three years to 2020 was 79 years for men, down by seven weeks from the three years to 2017.

It was virtually unchanged for women at just below 83 years.

These figures are based on death rates in the last three years and so have been heavily affected by the pandemic.

And as a result, they don’t really tell us what will happen to someone born this year.

That’s because they assume that, if I reach the age of 70, my chance of dying that year will be the same as a 70-year-old’s chance of dying has been for the last few years.

That won’t be the case: Hopefully medical technology will have improved and the terrible death rates of the pandemic will be long behind us.

These figures are a very important measure of the health of the nation.

It shouldn’t be surprising that, in the second year of a pandemic, they are down.

But they don’t mean that our children are going to be worse off than we are.

Image source, Getty

The US is to donate 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to developing nations from next year.

President Joe Biden made the pledge at a virtual Covid-19 summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, promising an "arsenal of vaccines".

The additional jabs will see the total US commitment on vaccine sharing exceed one billion jabs.

Experts say some 11 billion doses are required to vaccinate at least 70% of the global population.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a minimum target of 40% vaccine coverage in every country by the end of 2021.

But the goal is unlikely to be met.

While many high-income countries have now given at least one shot to more than half their populations, only 2% of people in low-income countries have had their first dose, according to data from the University of Oxford.

Read more here.

Image source, John Cairns/University of Oxford

More now from Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, the designer of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, who told a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that Covid-19 will eventually become more like the seasonal coronavirus that cause common colds.

She said: "We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2.

"We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses."

Seasonal coronaviruses cause colds, and Dame Sarah said: "Eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those."

Image source, Getty Images

Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people's immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, according to a leading expert.

Prof Sir John Bell, who was part of the team that developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, tells Times Radio the country "is over the worst" and things "should be fine" once winter has passed.

He was speaking after Prof Sarah Gilbert, who designed the Oxford vaccine, said Covid was likely to become like other seasonal coronaviruses that cause common colds, as immunity in the population grows and the virus evolves.

Speaking to Times Radio, he says: "If you look at the trajectory we're on, we're a lot better off than we were six months ago.

"So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it's not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths.

"And I think what will happen is, there will be quite a lot of background exposure to Delta (variant), we can see the case numbers are quite high, that particularly in people who've had two vaccines if they get a bit of breakthrough symptomatology, or not even symptomatology - if they just are asymptomatically infected, that will add to our immunity substantially, so I think we're headed for the position Sarah describes probably by next spring would be my view.

"We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine."

Here’s a quick look at some of the main coronavirus headlines this morning:

• Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people's immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading expert has said
• England's Chief Medical Officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has said Covid-19 transmission is highest among 12 to 15-year-olds, and that almost all unvaccinated children will get infected at some point
• Parents and pupils across the UK are being urged to increase their testing as the number of confirmed cases in schools slowly begins to rise
• Most recent weekly estimates suggest there were more than 100,000 children off school last week with Covid
• People are being evicted from their homes over rent arrears built up during the pandemic, despite the government saying no-one should lose their home as a result of the crisis, according to an investigation
• Around five million people in the UK have been invited to have the Covid vaccine but have not yet had the first dose
• Hairdressers in parts of the UK are reporting clients having new allergic reactions, like rashes and burns, to hair dye after contracting coronavirus
• US drug regulators have approved Pfizer booster vaccines for people over 65 if they had their last shot at least six months ago

Welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

We will be bringing you the latest updates throughout the day.