That's it from us on the BBC News NI live page for today. Thanks for joining us.

Take care and good night.

Travellers coming to the UK from the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Jamaica will now need to self-isolate for 14 days.

The three countries have been removed from the UK's quarantine exemption list.

In a tweet Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said those arriving in the UK from any of the three specified destinations after 04:00 BST on Saturday will need to self-isolate.

Health Minister Robin Swann has hit out at licensed premises that, he says, have been breaking the Covid-19 guidelines.

He said there has been a "blatant disregard" for Covid-19 regulations by some in the hospitality sector.

"If you flout the rules you must face the consequences," he told the Stormont news conference.

He says he will propose to his executive colleagues that legislation should be strengthened to punish those premises.

NI's Chief Scientific Adviser Prof Ian Young says that the cases of the virus per day have increased "more than tenfold since early July".

"At present most of those cases are in younger people and show hospital admissions and bed occupancy are growing slowly," he adds.

"Nonetheless it is clear that the virus is spreading and is everywhere in Northern Ireland."

More people in Northern Ireland will be admitted to hospital with Covid-19 and will ultimately die unless the spread of the virus is curbed, says Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride.

He says testing is a vital tool in controlling outbreaks of the virus and offers the reminder that "everyone who needs a test can get a test" including children under five years old.

He says Northern Ireland is "better prepared to control any resurgence in cases" but warns that there's "considerable uncertainty" about how the "prevalence of the virus will evolve" in the autumn and the winter.

Given that many of the new confirmed cases of the virus are in young people, he makes an appeal to that generation: "Please do not put your parents and your grandparents at risk."

NI's chief scientific adviser Prof Ian Young says that since the beginning of August the R-number has been consistently above 1.0.

He says it is now around 1.3 - "somewhere between 1 and 1.6 depending on how it is calculated".

Prof Ian Young says that the number of cases per day "has been increasing".

"Our low point was the beginning of July when we were experiencing three to four cases of the virus per day," he says.

"Now that is almost 60 cases per day on average."

Prof Young added that the highest incidence of cases recently has been in Mid and East Antrim, but the area he is most concerned about is Belfast, where the number of caes is is rising “consistently and steadily”.

Health Minister Robin Swann says the Covid-19 pandemic is "a nightmare that stretches on and on".

Announcing that the R-number, the rate of transmission, "is likely to be 1.3", he said it continues to be "the biggest public health crisis in a generation".

"Any complacency presents a challenge to us all," he added.

Mr Swann told the briefing that further clusters and outbreaks in hospitals "are inevitable", warning that there could be a difficult winter ahead.

"We must stick together as a society," he said.

Responding to news that 311,000 people in Northern Ireland are waiting for a first consultant appointment, the minister described waiting times as "totally and absolutely intolerable".

"I won't try to defend them as they are indefensible," he continued.

Health Minister Robin Swann says the past six months of the pandemic in NI have been like “living through a nightmare”.

Speaking as the Stormont Covid-19 briefing began, he said hospital admissions were at a low level, but they are rising.

The latest Covid-19 reproduction number (R) in Northern Ireland has been estimated at between 1.0 and 1.6.

The Department of Health says the average number of new tests a day over the past seven days was 56.3.

This shows a further increase in transmission in the last week, according to the department.

However, it added that the increase was "likely to be strongly influenced by a meat factor outbreak in Mid and East Antrim".

The department publishes its estimate of the so-called R number each week.

R represents the number of individuals who, on average, will be infected by a single person with coronavirus.

It does not have a fixed value but varies with time and is likely to be different every day.

Health Minister Robin Swann will be fronting the Covid-19 briefing at Stormont this afternoon.

We'll be streaming it live from 16:30 and providing text coverage to keep you up to date.

Just press the play button at the top of this page.

Retailers here are out hundreds of millions of pounds in sales since March, Aodhán Connolly from the NI Retail Consortium has said.

"We're estimating that shops in Northern Ireland have lost over £800m of retail sales in the first five months of the coronavirus pandemic," he told BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme.

"Retail sales are still to get back to the level they were at pre-crisis.

"It's really particularly acute in city centres where stores are suffering significant drops in footfall.

"We are dependent on the patronage of the public, it's not just the big-name retailers, it's the smaller ones, fast food shops, cafes.

"Any prolonged absense of civil servants, office workers, students and tourists will be felt hugely by consumer-facing businesses."

A BBC study has found that 50 major UK employers have no plans to return all staff to the office full time but what will that mean for city and town centres?

Tina McKenzie from the Federation of Small Businesses NI told BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme that "small businesses need that foot-flow coming through".

"Most people that I talk to want to get back to work - they don't want to sit at home and do their job," she said.

"For a few people that works really well but for most people they want to be in a team and after five months there really is a lack of motivation, I feel, and people want a change."

Here is a breakdown of the estimated cases per 100,000 people over the last seven days in each of Northern Ireland's council areas.

Twenty-two of the 69 new coronavirus cases recorded in the past day were in Belfast.

The city has had the biggest increase in cases over the past week with 101 cases, followed by Mid and East Antrim council area where 87 cases were recorded.

There has been one more coronavirus-linked death in Northern Ireland in the past day, according to the Department of Health, external.

That means the death toll from the virus in Northern Ireland stands at 560.

The department’s daily figures are mostly comprised of hospital deaths, where a patient had previously tested positive for the virus.

Another 69 people have also tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total number of confirmed cases here since the pandemic began to 6,964.

Richard Morgan
BBC News NI business reporter

The Park Avenue Hotel in east Belfast will not reopen after a "period of financial uncertainty".

The Beannchor Group, which owns it, says 45 members of staff are affected by the closure following the cancellation of a large number of bookings.

In a Facebook post the hotel thanked customers and staff "who came through the doors over the last 60 years".

Image source, Google Streetview

The Beannchor Group, which has The Merchant Hotel and Bullitt in its portfolio, tells BBC News NI that the pandemic had left the hotel in an unviable trading position.

“Despite making a number of significant changes to hotel operations prior to Covid-19 the recent devastating impact on the tourism industry has been too great to continue a viable hotel in this location,” says the firm.

Earlier this year a proposal was submitted to Belfast City Council for the residential development of the site and the council says those plans will now be explored.

Blind and partially sighted people have welcomed the publication of guidance on social distancing.

It's been developed in partnership between RNIB Northern Ireland, Guide Dogs Northern Ireland, the Health and Social Care Board and the Public Health Agency.

Heather Owens (below) from Belfast is blind and has experienced some difficulties trying to navigate public spaces under social distancing measures.

She said: “We need to help sighted people to better understand how difficult it is to socially distance when you can’t read the signage or see the tape.

"People must have patience and understanding as we’re doing our best under very difficult circumstances.

Image source, RNIB

"My hope is that the release of this guidance will mean people will show greater awareness and kindness to people with sight loss and that my previous experience won’t be repeated.”

Director of RNIB in Northern Ireland, Dr Jacqueline Witherow, said social distancing has been a challenge for people with sight loss.

"Our research shows that since lockdown two-thirds of blind and partially sighted people say they feel less independent," she said.

"Just as important, we want the wider public to better understand the difficulties our community faces and the support they can provide to those with sight loss.”

The guidance documents are available on the RNIB NI Website, external.

Northern Ireland's art scene is "looking at a cultural wasteland" without government funding, says the chief executive of a live music venue in Belfast.

Charlotte Dryden of the Oh Yeah Centre tells BBC Radio Foyle that financial support is desperately needed because the industry is "dying on its knees".

"We will be last out of this. We have now been told again that we can't open and yet there is no support to help with that.

"We are also still waiting on the £33m that the Department for Culture allocated to Northern Ireland. It's all very disappointing."

DUP MLA Pam Cameron said today's waiting list figures show the need to "reboot" services put on hold during lockdown.

"The sad, but unavoidable, reality is that for some patients the restoration of routine services will have already come too late in their fight against illness," she said.

"This is something the minister and HSCTs must urgently grapple with as we seek to prevent further harm and the possibility of new and deadly pandemic of non-Covid-related illness in the coming months."

Image source, Science Photo Library

Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw said: "We end up with a two-tier health service because those who can afford to can pay to skip the queue.

"I am concerned that the timescale for delivery in some key areas, such as a cancer strategy or stroke reconfiguration, are slated as delayed due to the pandemic," she said.

"To some extent this is natural, but the pandemic itself reinforces the point that old methods of working do not deliver."

Image source, PA Media

Ulster University's Prof Deirdre Heenan, who co-authored a report into health reform with the Nuffield Trust, told Talkback she has not seen evidence of a plan to deal with waiting lists.

"In NHS England, they were faced with similar problems and they made it a priority," she said.

"They set out a whole list of activities which would deal with the issue because they believed it was so critical.

"They also had the ability to look at their plan and say 'how are we doing?'

"It was transparent, there was accountability, it was a priority.

"I don't see any of that here, and that, from a policy perspective is what is so disappointing."