Downing Street has played down suggestions the planned lifting of lockdown in England could be brought forward from July 19.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that while there would be a two-week review of the data, currently cases were continuing to rise.
“We will monitor case data day by day to see if moving forward after two weeks is possible,” the spokesman said.
“You’ll see the data we are looking at – 10,000 cases recorded for the third day in a row on Saturday which is the highest level since February 2.
“The seven-day average for hospitalisations also continues to rise. ICU intake is also rising.”
However, earlier today Boris Johnson said that July 19 was “looking good” when asked if he would rule out further lockdowns this winter.
“You can never exclude that there will be some new disease, some new horror that we simply haven’t budgeted for, or accounted for,” the Prime Minister told reporters during a visit to a laboratory in Hertfordshire.
“But looking at where we are, looking at the efficacy of the vaccines against all variants that we can currently see – so Alpha, Delta, the lot of them, Kappa – I think it’s looking good for July 19 to be that terminus point.
“I think what the scientists are saying is that things like flu will come back this winter, we may have a rough winter for all sorts of reasons, and obviously there are big pressures on the NHS.
“All the more reason to reduce the number of Covid cases now, give the NHS the breathing space it needs to get on with dealing with all those other pressures, and we are certainly going to be putting in the investment to make sure that they can.”
