Sam Blanchard

Mr Williamson said the controversial mass testing programme was ‘vital’ for controlling Covid and urged parents to keep going even though critics say wrong results are forcing families to isolate.

Public Health England said that, so far, there have been 53 confirmed reinfections where people had clearly caught different versions of the virus, along with 16,371 ‘possible’ or ‘probable’ cases.

Professor Tim Spector, the King’s College London epidemiologist who runs the Covid Symptom Study, said he thinks the number of people getting sick with coronavirus will start to drop within two weeks.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at an NHS conference today, confirmed that anyone aged 18 or over in England will be able to get a vaccine from tomorrow morning.

An Office for National Statistics report found that only 0.5 per cent of people in the UK tested positive for coronavirus in the six months after their first jab, along with 0.1 per cent after the second dose.

Sir Andrew Pollard, chief of the Oxford Vaccine Group and Government adviser, said: ‘If very high protection against hospitalisation continues then the public health crisis is over.’

Researchers from Oxford University said the success of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody therapy was ‘a first’ because it successfully targets the virus in seriously ill patients.

Department of Health data show that cases appear to have started levelling off or falling in the four areas that were first to be hit by Indian ‘Delta’ variant outbreaks, raising hopes it can be controlled.

Researchers at Warwick University laid out what could happen if the Delta variant spreads significantly faster than the Alpha strain and warned of a wave even bigger than the previous two.

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chair of the UK’s JCVI vaccine advice committee, said the priority now was getting second doses to as many people as possible to stop the Delta variant.

The chief medical officer for England said the ‘key thing for children is safety’ and that pharmaceutical companies are testing the jabs to make sure they are safe for children to have.

In a move likely to enrage MPs, business leaders and hospitality chiefs, Boris Johnson is preparing to postpone the final stage of his Covid roadmap - which was due on June 21 - by four weeks.

Chris Hopson, chief of NHS Providers which represents hospitals across England, said that patients are younger, easier to treat and less likely to die than in earlier waves of the pandemic.

Both areas of North West England were added to a list of restrictions for people ‘in an area where the new Covid-19 variant is spreading’ as the Health Secretary said: ‘We know this approach can work.’

The NHS Covid vaccine programme today opened up to 25 to 29-year-olds, marking its first day available for under-30s as NHS England’s Dr Nikki Kanani said: ‘Please, please come forward.’

The Health Secretary told MPs in the House of Commons that jabs currently being deployed in Britain have started to break the once ‘rock solid’ link between infections and admissions.

Department of Health figures show that there were 42 people with Covid in the Royal Bolton Hospital on June 1, down from 49 at the peak of the town’s Indian variant scare a week earlier.

Public Health England figures show just seven out of 9,427 people to have been infected with the new strain were admitted to hospital even though they had had two doses of a vaccine.

Department of Health figures show that Blackburn now has the highest infection rate in England and Indian variant counts by the Sanger Institute show it has more cases than Bedford.

The weekly Office for National Statistics report estimated 48,500 people across England had the virus in the week to May 22, about flat with 49,000 the week earlier.