of the delta variant. china is attempting to stick to a zero covid strategy ahead of its lunar new year celebrations and the beijing winter olympics. wildfires rip through parts of colorado in the united states — destroying hundreds of homes — and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate the area. and mourners in south africa have been paying their respects to the late archbishop desmond tutu. hello and welcome. before we move to today's news — let's go to beijing and the ceremony there welcoming in the new year. china pursues a strict zero—covid strategy, using mass testing and lockdowns to stop outbreaks, and has a vigorous vaccination programme, with 86% of its population now fully jabbed. this is hong kong at the moment. australia was the first two see in their new year celebrations. this is their new year celebrations. this is the seen live in hong kong. beautiful. we will bring you more of those as and when they take place. as countries around the world welcome in 2022, many new year's eve celebrations have been cancelled or scaled back because of concern over covid infections. london and paris are among the cities to have cancelled their usual public celebrations — and edinburgh's hogmanay celebrations have also been called off. china is attempting to stick to a zero covid strategy ahead of the lunar new year. its vice premier has visited the northern city of xi'an, where 13 million people have been confined to their homes in one of the country's strictest lockdowns since the pandemic began. here in the uk, new figures suggest that nearly 2.3 million people in the uk were infected with covid in the week ending the 23rd of december — the highest level since the data was first compiled. separate data shows the number of nhs staff at acute trusts in england who were off work has risen by more than a0%. but some good news — data published by the uk health security agency shows the risk of hospitalisation with the omicron variant of coronavirus is about one—third that of the delta variant. the data also showed that a booster jab reduced the risk of hospitalisation by 81% when compared to an unvaccinated person. we'll have more on all of this — first this report on the situation in the uk from our health correspondent anna collinson. while most of us are looking forward to celebrating this new year's eve, it's a different story for nhs workers, with winter pressures intensifying, made worse by staff sickness. the staff that are at work will be caring for more patients, trying to do more to cover for their missing colleagues, working extra hours, starting early, finishing late. the pressure will be immense. staff absences are already leading to cancelled appointments and longer waiting times. now, new data shows more than 25,000 hospital staff in england were absent each day due to covid during the christmas week — a 42% increase on the previous seven days. at this time of year, we would normally expect around 5% of staff to be off sick, but this winter it's nearly double that and it's mainly down to covid. london has been the worst—hit, with some of the highest absences seen here at great ormond street hospital. in the week leading to christmas, new data by the office for national statistics suggests an estimated one in 15 people in london had covid — the highest in england. the uk also saw a new record high. scientists are warning there is real uncertainty about what the new year will bring. people currently who are very sadly dying of covid were probably infected on average something like 35 days ago, so, this was really before omicron started to transmit. it's therefore too early to say what the impact of omicron is going to be on the more severe end of the disease, and it's mostly been circulating in children, in people in contact with children, and it's now going to spread into older adults at much higher risk of severe disease. there are now calls for nhs workers to be prioritised for lateral flow tests to ease winter pressures. the government says the number of kits will triple by early next year after supply was recently described as patchy. some pharmacists for example didn't receive anything yesterday, so i have been asking around in terms of, like, if people have had their supply. some pharmacies received one box, some received two, but some received none. so, it's very patchy, it's inconsistent. if we are to meet the demand and follow the government guidelines, there's got to be better organisation around this. the key weapon aginst omicron is the boosterjab and governments in england, scotland and northern ireland say all eligible adults have now been offered one. though there have been reports of up to 40% of no—shows at some vaccination sites. whether this will be enough to protect the nhs, its staff and patients in the new year, is still unsure. anna collinson, bbc news. let's get more on the levels of coronavirus infections with the bbc�*s head of statistics robert cuffe. looking at the uk picture specifically here, and the good news is the figures seem relatively good so far, so does that reflect the success of the vaccine and the boost as well? ~ ,,., , ., , ., as well? absolutely. no question that if ou as well? absolutely. no question that if you have _ as well? absolutely. no question that if you have had _ as well? absolutely. no question that if you have had two - as well? absolutely. no question that if you have had two doses, l as well? absolutely. no question that if you have had two doses, a booster will give you better chances, and if you had had two doses are a couple of months ago, getting a booster now, it will roughly halve your chance of catching a case of omicron that put you in hospital and it has been a bit longer —— if it has been a bit longer since your second dose, that booster looks even more impressive, it will then quarter your chances of catching a case of omicron that put you in hospital so there is clear evidence that the boosters are doing what they should do, maybe not quite as well as they would against delta but they are still doing some pretty hefty lifting so for individuals the news is really good. the cloud behind the silver lining is that it looks as if the boosters will do well to stop a substantial rise in people going into hospital because the numbers are so huge. some concerning _ the numbers are so huge. some concerning numbers. _ the numbers are so huge. some concerning numbers. up - the numbers are so huge. some concerning numbers. up by - the numbers are so huge. some concerning numbers. up by 1 - the numbers are so huge. some - concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during _ concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during plan _ concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during plan b, _ concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during plan b, so - concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during plan b, so it- concerning numbers. up by1 million in a week during plan b, so it is- in a week during plan b, so it is pretty clear that the measures that were in place before christmas were not enough to stop the continued growth and spread of the virus and we have just seen the latest figures, a million cases in the uk reported across the last week, so really large numbers and that is the issue. we think omicron may be is as third as to but cases are three times higher than they were at the november so when you add into that mixture that cases will probably keep on growing, and the boosters are not quite as good at keeping people out of hospital as they wear for delta, they are great but not as amazing, and if you lay onto that so may be 30% of people who have had two doses have not been boosted, you can see there is a recipe that comes at quite strongly on the side of increasing numbers of people going into hospital in the coming weeks. you mentioned the figures that would have just dropped so i wonder if we can show these to our viewers. 189,846 people tested positive. the number of deaths within 28 days as a positive —— of a positive test is reported as 203. patients admitted to hospital, this is the data provided on the 27th of december, 1715. in terms of cases, similar to yesterday, but still going up. the whole week _ yesterday, but still going up. tue: whole week the yesterday, but still going up. tte: whole week the going yesterday, but still going up. tt2 whole week the going up, and as i said, a million cases reported in a week but we need to be careful about the numbers we get over christmas because people are staying with families and they don't necessarily get a test and we are starting to see pressures on the testing system because not everybody can get a test so we are not exactly sure what it is telling us, apart from that this is telling us, apart from that this is a big number. a bigger number than we have ever seen before and the first number you are getting is 2.3 million people from the infection survey, probably the most helpful number, of how big it is and how quick it is growing, but the overall picture is a pretty clear one, that the epidemic is growing at least in terms of cases. one thing to add, we quoted the numbers for people going into hospital in the uk, but we have more recent data for england and we are starting to see the effects, 2400 people going into hospital in england on the 29th of december, three times higher than it was two weeks ago, so we are starting to see those big rises in infections feeding through into the number of people going into hospital, and we don't know where it will land and where the peak will be but we know the direction of travel. borisjohnson but we know the direction of travel. boris johnson says but we know the direction of travel. borisjohnson says he has met his target of every adult in england are being offered a covid jab by today, but what is the uptake? tt is being offered a covid jab by today, but what is the uptake?— but what is the uptake? it is like a -a but what is the uptake? it is like a party where _ but what is the uptake? it is like a party where you — but what is the uptake? it is like a party where you send _ but what is the uptake? it is like a party where you send out - but what is the uptake? it is like a party where you send out the - but what is the uptake? it is like a l party where you send out the invites but not everybody decides they want to come. 30% of people who have had two doses of the vaccine are still to be boosted, and the progress made over christmas was remarkable, days with 900,000 people, million people per day, but that is now back down to around 400,000, so given that there are around about 14 million people still need to get boosted, and it takes about a fortnight before those people really start to see the benefit of the boost in terms of staving off the virus, we have got to face the fact that we are going into january with high levels of infection running around the uk and a lot of people who don't have the extra protection that a booster will give them, and they won't get it for a couple of weeks yet. great news for the 33 million people who have had their booster so far and a great improvement over december but there is still quite a long way to go in terms of the booster uptake. tar long way to go in terms of the booster uptake.— long way to go in terms of the booster uptake. for now, robert, thanks for— booster uptake. for now, robert, thanks forjoining _ booster uptake. for now, robert, thanks forjoining us. _ the uk's medicines regulator has approved a new anti viral pill for covid. the drug company pfizer claims that when taken by high risk patients with mild to moderate symptoms, paxlovid reduces hospitalizations and deaths by 89%. the two active substances of paxlovid come as separate tablets that are packaged and taken together, twice a day by mouth for five days. authorities in china are attempting to stick to a zero coronavirus strategy ahead of its lunar new year celebrations and the beijing winter olympics. the country's vice premier has visited the northern city of xi'an, where 13 million people have been confined to their homes in one of the country's strictest lockdowns since the pandemic began. these images are from inside xi'an. sun chunlan told officials there to speed up testing and do more to isolate the close contacts of those found to be positive. more than 1,200 cases have been found in the city in the past few weeks. dr xi chen from yale university is an expert on health policy and explained why china is continuing to pursue a strategic of �*zero covid'. china has been maintaining a zero tolerance policy for a long time, almost two years, so it is ramping up mass testing, quarantine, and the strict border controls, and although the case numbers are low, china has been worried about once it is opening up it will make the health system a very stressful. there is a concern about the ageing population and underlying and chronic conditions. it is higher stakes now, with the high transmissibility of the delta and omicron variants, the worry is, if they open up, especially before the spring festival, before the major event, the winter olympics, it may get worse, so that is why the stakes are higher but they still think it is in the interests at least for the next couple of months to keep the virus at bay. joe biden has warned vladimir putin that the us and its allies will �*respond decisively�* if russia invades ukraine. the two leaders held a telephone discussion for the second time in less than a month, amid concerns at the number of russian troops massing at the ukrainian border. a kremlin spokesperson said president putin had made it clear that new sanctions against russia would be a �*colossal mistake�*. katharine quinn—judge, a ukraine analyst at the international crisis group, has been giving us her reaction on the rhetoric coming from the kremlin and the white house. i think the international community should be very concerned. i think one could also say the international community should have been more concerned in the years leading up to this scare given that the number of russian troops, according to most estimates, massed around ukrainian borders is in fact not that much higher than troop numbers that ukranian officials have cited in the past few years when there has not been an international scare about the war in ukraine. this is a particularly scary time given that russia has issued a series of demands that it basically knows the west will not meet. as many have pointed out, there could be real reputational loss for putin in stepping back at this point. saying that i don�*t think that, all in all, that either side, either russia or ukraine would gain from an escalation at this point and i think there are saner heads in the kremlin that know that this is the case so i don�*t think that there will necessarily be an escalation but i think people should be concerned. firefighters north of the us city of denver in colorado are battling what has quickly become the most destructive wildfire in the modern history of the state. at least 300 homes have been destroyed — along with a hotel and a shopping centre. more than 30,000 people have had to evacuate, as well as patients and staff at one hospital. the us federal emergency management agency has released funds for disaster relief. louisa pilbeam reports. "get out while you can," was the message from rescue services in colorado. a state of emergency was declared as hundreds of homes were swallowed by flames and upwards of 30,000 residents were told to evacuate from the towns of superior and louisville near the rocky mountains. what are you taking with you? two kids, a dog, two cats and my husband! just saw some smoke at first and then itjust ended up - getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the wind i picked up. and pretty soon it was, like, the whole neighbourhood i was pretty much engulfed. taking to the roads, residents fleeing the flames. right now they�*re trying to evacuate as much as they can and trying to get people going back to the east. the governor of colorado has declared a state of emergency. with no warning, gusts of100mph,110mph, can and have moved this fire down a football field in a matter of seconds. very little time to get out, very little time to even get the most important parts of your life. preliminarily, the reportsi were downed power lines, and we had deputies in the area who confirmed there _ were downed power lines. so, we believe that'sj what caused the fire. that assessment, and the actual determination of that will be - made for real and for final probably in the next - couple of days. it�*s winter in colorado, and experts say recent weather conditions are to blame. we are in an extreme drought in this part of the state here, because we haven�*t gotten much moisture, and so you add that with incredibly strong winds, like what we�*re seeing out there right now, and itjust makes an already bad situation worse in terms of fire crews trying to get a handle on the fire. those fire crews will welcome the news that snow is forecast in denver and eastern colorado in the coming hours, which it�*s hoped will help to control the fires. louisa pilbeam, bbc news. here in the uk, the number of teenagers murdered in the capital london has reached a new yearly high — after two boys were stabbed to death yesterday within an hour of each another. one was a 16—year—old boy in hillingdon, west london. the other a 15—year—old boy, found fatally wounded in croydon in south london. police say it�*s too early to say whether the two incidents, which were more than 20 miles apart, were linked. 30 teenagers have now been killed in london this year. our home affairs correspondent tom symonds has been at the scene in west london and has been giving us the latest. police were called to an area at the other side of where the police van is, a green area of parkland, just before 830 yesterday evening. all they have said is that the 16—year—old was found suffering from what they called puncture wounds but clearly there is the potential for him to have been stabbed. two murders at the end of 2021, which have pushed the number of youth homicides or murders or manslaughter is above the level it was at in 2008 which was a previous high. this is actually bucking a national trend in violence generally with murders and knife crime and gun crime all down, but in london they have been 125 murders this year of which 81 were stabbings. 50 involved victims under the age of 25 and as we have heard 30 were under the age of 18. of course there is a general desire to work out why this is happening and why that trend is being barked and one thing that has happened in the last year is that there has been an increased emphasis on looking at each case to work out what the factors were behind them. for example in london there has been an increase in the number of serious case reviews to the side these kind of murders and as far as far as i�*m aware no results have yet been published. police this morning at the other murder scene in croydon said that social media continues to play a major part in these disagreements between young people. the disagreements online spilling out to violence in real life on streets and in places like this across london.— streets and in places like this across london. “ , ., ., across london. a15-year-old boy has been arrested _ across london. a15-year-old boy has been arrested on _ across london. a15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion _ across london. a15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of - across london. a15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of and . been arrested on suspicion of and taken to a south london police station where he remains in custody. in the aftermath of the grenfell tower fire in 2017, dangerous cladding was found on thousands of high rise buildings around the world. some countries like australia took rapid action. in the state of victoria a task force was set up three weeks after grenfell to find out how many buildings were unsafe and a tax on construction firms has helped to pay for the work needed. here in the uk, there are no official figures on how many residential blocks are wrapped in dangerous materials and the government�*s cladding fund only covers buildings above a certain height. australia had an early warning about cladding. this is 2014 in melbourne, an apartment block catches fire. the flames spread quickly. it�*s wrapped in the same type of cladding as grenfell tower. thankfully, everyone got out in time. the government acted quickly and started inspecting buildings. after the grenfell tragedy, that ramped up. they decided they needed to look at every building that was built since 1997 that was three storeys or more. and i think this was one of the real successes of the cladding story here, was that they were able to identify all those different buildings, do thousands of inspections, and they now know which buildings have combustible cladding. in contrast, in the uk, there are still no official figures on the number of blocks with unsafe cladding. labour and cladding campaigners have repeatedly called for ministers to follow the australian approach. thangam debbonaire. the government could have done as victoria in australia did — set up a task force to assess the extent of dangerous cladding, prioritised by risk. this is cladding being removed in melbourne. a building levy has forced construction firms to help pay for the work. it is an international problem... politicians in victoria told me they�*ve treated this as a public safety emergency. $300 million being raised through a building permit levy, because people understood, understand absolutely, the nexus between the levy and getting buildings fixed, because ultimately, this is about community safety. and we are the only state in australia that is doing this cladding rectification work. the other really important point, of course, is that we also moved to ban flammable cladding, and this is in fact similar to the product that was on the grenfell building. you cannot put this product on any building here in victoria, finished. the british government has introduced similar bans, and on both continents, those living in cladded buildings share similar frustrations. all that cladding, all those trimmings... government funding doesn�*t cover everything. it's going to cost us all some thousands of dollars each, as owners, to get it removed. yeah, it's been stressful, and even more than that, frustrating. - this cladding shouldn't have been there in the first place. _ consumer protection in this space is very little or none. and really, it needs to improve, because at the moment, we�*re barely meeting minimum standards. we�*re trying to hit minimum standards, and as cladding shows, we don�*t always. the australian approach isn�*t perfect but it is held up as an example of how to deal with this complex and costly problems. sarah corker, bbc news. you are watching bbc news. there is more coming up. hello, it doesn�*t feel much like the last day of december out there. an extraordinarily mild new year�*s eve — as we head through this evening into the start of the new year, it will stay very, very mild. quite windy. dry for many but not quite for all of us. this afternoon�*s temperatures, though, across northern scotland, eight or nine degrees, that�*s a bit above average. 15, 16 or 17 further south, that�*s a lot above average. some spells of sunshine in places. quite windy out there — increasingly windy across western parts, and some patchy rain for northern ireland and parts of scotland. as we go through this evening, while many places will be dry, we will see this band of potentially quite heavy rain pushing across northern ireland into south—west scotland and north—west england by midnight, by which point temperatures will be between nine and 13 degrees. but it will turn increasingly windy. these are the wind gusts to take us through the small hours of saturday, gusts of 40 to 50 mph around western coasts and maybe stronger than that in the most exposed locations. because low pressure will be pushing to the north—west of the uk. lots of the white lines, lots of isobars squeezing together so there will be some brisk winds and also a weather front pushing its way eastwards. it may be this rain isn�*t particularly widespread but in places, it could be quite heavy as it works its way eastwards. some spells of sunshine, too. more showery rain into northern ireland and western scotland later. again, some of that could be on the heavy side. it stays fairly windy through the day and it stays exceptionally mild. 13 degrees in aberdeen and 15 for cardiff. somewhere we�*re likely get to 16 or 17 degrees through the afternoon. for sunday, things look quite unsettled. we�*ll see showers or longer spells of rain, some sunny spells as well. a subtle change in wind direction — winds coming in from the west. still mild — still very mild, really, but not quite as mild as it is at the moment. and then a bigger change as we head through next week. initially it looks unsettled, low pressure always close by — we�*ll see showers on longer spells of rain — but as that area of low pressure works its way eastwards, it will for a time open the door to a northerly wind. so around tuesday into the middle part of the week, things will start to feel quite a lot of colder with potential for wintry showers in the north. temperatures stay a little lower as we head through the week and it remains unsettled with more rain at times. this is bbc news, the headlines... countries around the world are seeing in the new year with scaled back celebrations — as the omicron variant continues to drive up covid infections. covid infections in the uk reach a new high — it�*s estimated one in 30 people would have tested positive in the run up to christmas. one study suggests the risk of hospitalisation with omicron is about one—third that of the delta variant. wildfires rip through parts of colorado in the united states — destroying hundreds of homes and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate the area. and mourners in south africa have been paying their respects to the late archbishop desmond tutu. now on bbc news, mel brooks talks to alan yentob about his life. i know the word can be overused, but mel brooks is a legend —