Matt Hancock is set to face the media during a Downing Street press conference a day after Dominic Cummings made a string of allegations against the health secretary.
Prevalence of the so-called Indian variant in the UK poses a “major risk” to other European countries, a leading scientist has warned.
“As B.1.617.2 starts to increase, we may also be at risk of exporting a more worrisome form of the virus to other countries ... not the other way around,” Ravi Gupta told The Independent, as Boris Johnson acknowledged England “may need to wait” longer than the scheduled 21 June deadline to end all social distancing measures.
The warning comes after Matt Hancock said it is “too early to say” if the next stage of the roadmap will go ahead next month. Responding to claims made by Professor Neil Ferguson, who today told BBC Radio 4 that the Indian variant went from “being a small minority to the majority variant”, the health secretary said it is true “that the variant is spreading across the country”.
But he also suggested all hope is not lost. “It is too early to say, yet, whether we can take the full step four on 21 June,” Mr Hancock told MPs today. “I desperately want us to but we will only do that if it’s safe.”
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