According to a study by the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, ‘in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic’ the UK’s population ‘may have fallen by as much as 1.3 million’; labour data – ‘more reliable than migration statistics’ – ‘suggest a drop of more than half a million in the number of foreign-born residents in the year to last September’, and academic authors Michael O’Connor and Jonathan Portes attribute this fall to an ‘“unprecedented exodus” of foreign-born workers’ following the Coronavirus outbreak.

All three letters in this week’s Sunday Telegraph favour ‘assisted dying’; two cite free choice and the wish for a dignified death, while a lady with terminal metastatic breast cancer says she is ‘stable and in minimal pain, thanks to superb hospital staff and sheer luck’, but fears ‘[s]uffering prolonged agony because Britain has only a partial palliative care system’, and knows ‘that towards the end it will fail me’, as it has her ‘uncle and two other relatives similarly failed by their hospitals, despite the compassion of their nurses’.

Emma Barnett, the new presenter of BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour, read out ‘a rare and personal’ message from the Queen to mark the beginning of the programme’s 75th year; the 94-year-old monarch, ‘understood to be a long time listener of the programme’ sent the ‘warm message of celebration and continued success’, praising the programme for being ‘“a friend, guide and advocate to women everywhere”’, and hailing the ‘“significant” part the BBC show had played in the “evolvi

With pressure on the health services from the Coronavirus pandemic meaning that women in their 40s are being ‘denied IVF treatment’, leaving ‘some women in limbo, not knowing if their fertility treatment will be continued’, Steve McCabe, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, has tabled an early day motion on the issue; he commented: ‘“Infertility is a medical condition recognised by the World Health Organisation but for too long treatment has been rationed by accountants seeking to trim CCG budgets”’.

Accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers is warning of a Covid-driven slump in the birth rate, as months spent in lockdown ‘did not translate into more time for making babies’; with ‘fewer than 600,000 ...

Tommy Pilling, who has died at the age of 62 after catching coronavirus, ‘made headlines’ in 1995 when as a man with Down’s syndrome, he married  Maryanne, who also has Down’s – the first such marriage in the UK. The couple lived independently for 25 years, but he died on January 1 after being admitted to hospital with a chest infection and, ‘having previously shielded for 10 months’,  is thought to have contracted Covid while there.