The June 21 end of lockdown is hanging in the balance after Boris Johnson warned it's is STILL too early to say if he can lift restrictions.
The Prime Minister today said "at the moment" he can see nothing that shows step four must be delayed - but warned the data is too "ambiguous".
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there "isn't anything yet in data to say that we are definitively off track" to lift restrictions.
It comes despite Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam suggesting medics would have a "ranging shot" at data on the Indian variant last week.
The PM admitted he's locked in "long" meetings just 11 days before the deadline to confirm or delay step four - which would lift all legal restrictions and reopen nightclubs.
Mr Johnson spoke as cases surge and the Delta Covid variant (formerly the Indian variant) is dominant in the UK.
Yet deaths, which lag by three to four weeks behind cases, fell to zero on Monday - prompting furious calls from Tory MPs to reopen the economy.
The Prime Minister said: “I can see nothing in the data at the moment that means we can’t go ahead with step four, all the reopening on June 21, but we’ve got to be so cautious.
“Because there’s no question the ONS data of infection rates is showing an increase.
"We always knew that was going to happen…. What we need to work is out is to what extent the vaccination programme has protected enough of us, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, against a new surge.
“And there I’m afraid the data is just still ambiguous.
“And so every day we’re having long sessions, we’re interrogating all the data, we’re looking at all the various models, and the best the scientists can say at the moment in their guidance to us is we just need to give it a little bit longer.
“I’m sorry that’s frustrating for people, I know people want a clear answer about the way ahead for June 21, but at the moment we’ve just got to wait a little bit longer.”
The Health Secretary also urged caution at a speech in Oxford on Wednesday.
He said: "As the Prime Minister said earlier, there isn't anything yet in data to say that we are definitively off track but it is too early to make a decision about the June 21 step - Step 4 of the roadmap - and we will make that decision based on more data in the next week to 10 days, ahead of June 14 as we've set out."
Mr Hancock said the "critical question" as whether the link between cases and people being sent to hospital was broken.
Government advisors are split over whether the UK is already in the start of a third wave of Covid due to the new variant.
Cases are much lower among the over-50s age group, who are more likely to have had both doses of the vaccine, than younger Brits.
ONS estimates suggest just 1 in 4,000 over-50s would have tested positive for Covid on May 22.
That compares to 1 in 900 people aged 35 to 49, 1 in 1,000 people aged 25 to 34, and 1 in 370 young people aged 12 to 24.
While still low, hospitalisations and deaths have risen in recent weeks - and the majority of those are still happening in older age groups.
But Public Health England data shows that from 5,599 variant sufferers up to May 25, only 177 were known to have received both doses of the vaccine. Two of those died.
That suggests the UK is in a race to get people vaccinated before the variant spreads too far - with figures today expected to show 75% of the adult population have received first doses.
John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said things were “looking good” after the zero-death announcement.
He said the country needs to “move on” as he called for huge efforts to inoculate the world, “otherwise we will just be slammed” by new variants.
The planned Freedom Day relaxation of coronavirus curbs is stalled in uncertainty.
Speaking at a Global Vaccine Confidence Summit at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, Mr Hancock said that while the Government took risks in backing vaccines, “the biggest risk would have been the failure to find a vaccine at all”.
He added: “We explicitly embraced risk early on, so we backed lots of horses and invested at risk. And instead of sitting back and waiting to see which vaccines came off, we were tenacious in helping them to get over the line, drawing on the abundant industry experience in our team.
"We helped to bring together Oxford and AstraZeneca and bring them to the table, a partnership which has been a lifeline, not just here, but in the developing world. We offered funding for the early manufacture of the vaccines, before we knew whether they would work and we backed manufacturing plants too.”
Mr Hancock also hailed the Vaccine Taskforce as the “single greatest asset that we had in this crisis”.
