We're now bringing our live page to a close for today. We'll be back with another live page on Wednesday.

Our writers were Alex Therrien and Katie Wright.

The page was edited by Paul Gribben

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We'll soon be bringing our live page to a pause for today. But before we do, here is a recap of the main coronavirus stories from today.

• The number of deaths registered in England and Wales that mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate in the week ending 13 August was at the highest level since late March, according to the Office for National Statistics. A total of 571 deaths mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate
• Nicola Sturgeon has said she cannot rule out the reintroduction of some Covid restrictions as the number of daily cases reached a record high in Scotland. The first minister said the country was at another "fragile and pivotal moment" in the pandemic
• Scotland is to hold its own public inquiry into the handling of the Covid pandemic by the end of the year, the Scottish government has confirmed. The announcement follows pressure from relatives of some who have died
• Retail leaders are urging the UK government to follow Scotland's example in extending new protections for shop workers. It comes as shop workers said abuse had been "so much worse" during the pandemic

Image source, EPA

It is up to individual areas if they want to require visitors to take a Covid test before entering, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has told the BBC.

Cumbria’s director of public health has called for people to ensure they test negative before holidaying in the area, and those travelling to the Lincolnshire coast are now being encouraged to do the same.

Asked about this by the BBC while on a visit to Northern Ireland, Mr Dowden responded: “Of course it’s up to individual areas what further precautions they take.

"But the key thing is, get that jab. That will enable people to have wonderful holidays just like the ones I’ve seen people having here".

Image source, Getty Images

Experienced staff will leave the NHS sooner than they might have if the government does not come up with a plan for the health service's recovery from the pandemic and its future, a senior health leader has warned.

The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said she is "genuinely not confident" the government has a plan for the NHS, which is facing rising waiting lists and continued pressure from coronavirus cases.

Dr Katherine Henderson said there must be a plan in the short term to manage public expectations and give staff a vision on "somewhere that we're going" and a longer term outline of how to resource the health service to provide the care people expect.

If this does not happen soon, the most experienced people who are approaching retirement but are "holding a lot of stuff together" will "bail out", she said.

She told the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus: "We can't limp from investigation to investigation, to criticism, to yet another scandal where workforce comes down to being the primary problem.

"We don't have enough people able to deliver the standard of care that we believe the NHS ought to be able to do."

She said while younger people will always come into the NHS, there will be employees with years of experience "who will leave sooner than they should".

Tourists are being asked to stay away from Cornwall unless they have pre-booked their trip, the region's tourist board has warned.

The South West has seen a recent spike in Covid-19 cases across Devon and Cornwall.

The latest figures show Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have 717 cases per 100,000 people.

Malcolm Bell, head of Visit Cornwall, is calling on visitors to help keep the region safe.

He said the county had witnessed "too many occurrences of overcrowding in honey pots" and urged visitors to consider visiting less popular parts. "We have over 300 beaches and lovely parts that can cope with visitors," he said.

Read more here.

Kerry Allen
BBC Monitoring, Chinese Media Analyst

China has recorded only one domestic coronavirus case today, and papers are lauding the success of the country reversing a widespread outbreak of the Delta variant.

In mid-July, multiple workers at an international airport in Nanjing tested positive with the virus.

By early August, the number of daily cases nationwide had reached triple digits, and official media said that cases had been detected in at least 17 of China’s 31 provincial-level regions.

Regional governments responded to this by instantly locking down communities where cases of the virus had been detected, and imposing travel restrictions. There were multiple rounds of city-wide Covid-19 tests in multiple cities to identify if neighbours and close contacts of confirmed cases were asymptomatic.

The national Global Times, external newspaper said that the outbreak was regarded as the most widespread since the original Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, at the beginning of 2020.

However, on Sunday, the National Health Commission said that the country had recorded zero confirmed cases, external “for the first time in over a month”, 35 days since the first case had been detected.

The lockdown and mass-test approach has been somewhat routine in China, and the Xinhua News Agency says that “this strategy has proven effective in rapidly controlling more than 20 imported outbreaks”.

China knows, however, that it can’t lock down forever. It hopes to reopen to the world by early 2022, external, provided that at least 80% of its 1.4 billion population are fully vaccinated.

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The breast milk of mothers who have had Covid-19 vaccines contains a significant level of antibodies that may help protect nursing babies from the virus, a small study suggests.

When babies are born, their underdeveloped immune systems make it hard for them to fight infections on their own.

They are also often too young to respond adequately to certain types of vaccines, experts say.

For this study researchers recruited 21 lactating healthcare workers who had never contracted the virus.

They sampled the mothers' breast milk and blood three times - before vaccination, after the first dose and after the second dose.

There was a robust antibody response in blood and breast milk after the second dose - about a hundred-fold increase compared with levels before vaccination - the study found.

Joseph Larkin III, senior author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Florida, said: "Our findings show that vaccination results in a significant increase in antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes Covid-19 - in breast milk, suggesting that vaccinated mothers can pass on this immunity to their babies, something we are working to confirm in our ongoing research."

As we have been reporting, the latest ONS figures suggest coronavirus-related deaths in England and Wales in the week ending 13 August were at their highest levels since late March.

The ONS counts deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate, even if the person had not been tested for the virus.

By this measurement there have been 156,958 deaths since the pandemic began.

Because death certificates take time to be registered, these figures are several weeks old by the time they are released.

The other main way coronavirus deaths are counted is in the UK government's daily figures, which count people who died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus. By this measurement there have been 131,680 deaths.

There is also a bit of a lag in these figures, although they are more up to date than the ONS data so are monitored by healthcare experts, scientists and politicians to help them decide on their next steps.

The daily deaths figures have been growing even higher since the period covered by the ONS stats released today, with deaths now averaging above 100 a day over the past week.

The daily figure will next be updated at 16:00 BST.

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Of course, talk of Scotland's intention to hold a public inquiry this year into how the pandemic has been handled in Scotland promots the queston of when the UK-wide independent public inquiry already announced by Boris Johnson will actually start.

Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed that the Scottish government would "liaise closely" with the UK government and the other devolved administrations on the likely terms of a UK-wide inquiry to "avoid duplication and overlap".

The prime minister has said he intends to launch the UK inquiry in spring 2022 - and has resisted calls to bring it forward.

Earlier this year, Labour called for it to start this summer - but that was before the third wave of Covid took hold.

And England's deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, has said that requiring medical experts and front-line workers to attend an inquiry at a time when Covid is still so prevalent would be "an extra burden that wasn't necessary".

The exact aims and remit of the inquiry - known as the terms of reference - will be announced closer to the start of the inquiry next year.

This is partly to allow time for the UK government to work with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on deciding its exact scope.

Read more about how the UK inquiry will work here.

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Here is what we know about Scotland's plans to hold its own public inquiry into the handling of the Covid pandemic:

• A draft of aims and principles for the inquiry was published today, with members of the public invited to comment until 30 September
• It said particular consideration would be given to the "four harms" of the pandemic: direct health impacts - including cases and deaths in care homes; other non-Covid health impacts; societal impacts - including education; economic impacts
• Scotland's top prosecutor, Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, has begun discussions about appointing a judge to lead the inquiry
• The Scottish government said the inquiry will be held by the end of the year

Image source, Pacemaker

Pregnant women are being urged to get vaccinated after a woman from Northern Ireland died with Covid-19 two weeks after giving birth.

The funeral of Samantha Willis was held on Monday. The mother-of-four died in intensive care on Friday, after spending 16 days in hospital with Covid-19.

Dr David Farren, an infection control doctor, said hospitals were now "constantly" seeing pregnant women with Covid.

Speaking to BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster programme, Dr Farren said: "Now the majority do well but we do see occasionally people ending up in intensive care, having to have their babies delivered early and last week we saw a tragic death."

"Enough's enough. Pregnant women need to get their vaccine," he said.

Dr Farren said he could understand the initial hesitancy of pregnant women to get vaccinated because there had been "mixed messages".

However, he added: "People need to start trusting their doctors, their midwives, their nurses and not listening to people who have spent 30 minutes on the internet and decided it's not safe."

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

A plea to visitors to take lateral flow tests before coming to Cumbria may have an impact on bookings at a "crucial time", a tourism chief has warned.

The area's director of public health Colin Cox said tourists should ensure they were virus-free as a "courtesy" after a spike of cases in Eden.

Alison Magee-Barker, who works with tourism and hospitality firms, said asking visitors to take tests could result in a loss of business.

She said: "Potentially it could put people off and we're coming up to a winter season where we really fight for guests.

"We've had such a hard time in the hospitality industry over the last 18 months with restrictions and guidelines. This could be another nail in the coffin."

Read more here.

About 600,000 young Scots will be able to get dental care free of charge, as the Scottish Government has pledged more cash to help that sector recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dentists are to get a further £7.5m of funding, with the government cash allowing practices to buy new drills, which do not generate as much aerosol as standard drills, reducing the risks of spreading Covid-19.

The funding was announced at the same time as Health Secretary Humza Yousaf confirmed all those under the age of 26 are now eligible for free dental care.

Nicola Sturgeon is taking questions from journalists, and she is asked what impact schools and universities returning will have on Covid cases in Scotland and the NHS.

The first minister says there are less hospitalisations currently - adding that when cases are high, a small percentage of those cases will still result in a large number of people becoming seriously ill.

She also says the NHS is trying to return to normal so the margins of tolerance to deal with Covid are smaller than at the start of the pandemic when hospitals were cleared to deal with the virus.

She adds that it will take less for the NHS to face significant pressures.

Sturgeon says the vaccine is providing a shield but the virus is still trying "to beat us".

"I don't underestimate how difficult this is but nobody can wave a magic wand and make it all go away," she says.

Scotland's first minister says there has been a "sharp rise" in cases with new cases more than doubling over the past week.

Nicola Sturgeon says it is one of the sharpest rises the country has experienced at any point during the pandemic.

"Today's figure is the largest recorded in a single day though it is worth remembering that we do more testing now than was the case in the early stages of the pandemic," she says.

She says that if the surge continues and accelerates and there is an increase in serious illness, she cannot rule out having to re-impose some restrictions.

However, the first minister says she hopes not to have to do that and, if she does, the restrictions will be as limited and proportionate as possible.

The country is at another "fragile and pivotal moment" in the pandemic, she adds.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is holding her coronavirus update.

She begins by going through Tuesday's coronavirus figures.

The first minister says there were 4,323 cases reported on Monday - the equivalent of 14.5% of all tests carried out.

She says 364 people are in hospital - a rise of eight since yesterday and 43 people are in intensive care, two more than on Monday.

A further 10 deaths have been recorded - that takes the total number of deaths registered under this daily measurement to 8,080.

As of this morning 4,085,552 people have received one dose while 3,587,145 have received both doses.

Around 80% of over-18s have now had both doses - and 95% of over-40s. She says these are "genuinely remarkable" figures.

A statement on behalf of members of the Scottish branch of the UK group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice welcomed the Scottish government's plans for a Covid inquiry.

It says: "The families are grateful that the Scottish government has listened to their demands and an independent Scottish public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths and the subsequent handling of the Covid pandemic will now take place."

It adds: "Today is the first important step in establishing accountability for 10,421 lives lost to Covid-19 in Scotland."

It says that the core priority is to get the public inquiry up and running by the end of this calendar year.

Scots are being asked for their views on an independent inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Scottish government says it will be established by the end of the year to look at decisions and learn lessons for future pandemics.

Particular consideration will be given to cases and deaths in care homes, the impact on education and the economy.

The public are being encouraged to share their ideas and comments on email by 30 September.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said discussions were also ongoing with the UK government on the planned four nations inquiry.

Read more details here.

Long Covid patients in north Wales are helping the area's health board tailor a wide range of treatments to support fellow sufferers.

Long Covid is defined as symptoms continuing for more than 12 weeks after an initial infection.

About 15% of Covid patients are thought to be affected and, while not all will need ongoing treatment, many will.

The Long Recovery Programme Group will feature regular meetings between staff and patients at Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board to hear first-hand accounts of health problems.

One 38-year-old health worker now needs crutches to walk nearly 18 months after she first contracted Covid.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Covid infections are soaring in the sparsely-populated Pacific territory of French Polynesia, with health authorities reporting 54 deaths from the virus over the weekend as the Delta variant spreads among a largely unvaccinated population.

More than 300 people have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic hit the remote archipelago, home to 280,000 inhabitants.

More than half of those deaths have come in the last three weeks.

The territory has so far recorded 7,591 infections, although the true figure is likely to be higher as most asymptomatic people are not being tested.

High rates of diabetes and obesity have made the population more vulnerable.

The territory's limited health care system has struggled to cope, with one major hospital setting up beds in hallways to handle the rising number of patients.

Bodies have been loaded onto refrigerator trucks to relieve pressure on the overwhelmed morgue.