There is no data to suggest England's end to lockdown on 21 June might be delayed, the business secretary has said - but he cannot give a guarantee. "I don't think we will move the date," said Kwasi Kwarteng - but added that the scientific evidence could change.

Some health experts believe the 21 June date - when all remaining restrictions in England are due to be lifted - should be delayed until a greater proportion of the population have had two doses.

Currently, 45.6% of the UK's adult population have had their second dose - around 24 million people - and this proportion is rising by roughly 5% every week.

"If we can just delay international travel, delay stage four of the roadmap until we have a much higher proportion of people vaccinated with two doses, we're in a much, much better position," said Prof Christina Pagel, from University College London. We're only two months away from that, it's not long to wait."

Prof Andrew Hayward, a member of the Sage advisory group, added: "I think there is a good argument for caution until such time as we've got a much higher proportion of the population double vaccinated."

Pointless. They won't be chucked out anyway. We're stuck with them, and more are still coming.

I believe there's no hope now. The country's had it, but thankfully not in my lifetime.

Believe it or believe it not, we're going to see mass emigrations as the situation continues to deteriorate.

Johnson and Johnson single dose vaccination for Covid19 approved.

The average number of daily cases is still rising.

A further 4,182 confirmed cases in the UK were announced by the government on Friday

You would expect some increase in transmission given that people are mixing again big time. The big difference is that this time last year there were nearly 9,000 patients in hospital with Covid, now it's under 900. 120 people on ventilators vs 783 the same day last year.

It's quite difficult to see the full picture as the last set of robust data analysed for trends by the ONS seems to be Feb 21. At least it's not easy to find more than news reports. I wanted to see whether there were more younger people being admitted to hospital but couldn't find stats.

Last year at this time we were all in Lockdown Annie after the great big surge in cases that we hadn't accounted for. This year we have just come out of a very successful lockdown, everyone has been wearing masks and observing social distancing and most old folk are too scared to come out of their houses.
As you know, the effects from anything we do to prevent the spread of the virus, or to prevent so many hospital admissions does not become apparent for several weeks or even months afterwards. This also applies to the mixing of people and the relaxing of rules. Give it time Annie....