People may be able to hug their loved ones again from June 21 with up to seven in 10 of adults having been found to have coronavirus antibodies, an expert said.
An Office for National Statistics (ONS) testing survey has today revealed 68.3 percent of people in England have virus-fighting proteins, as of the week ending April 11.
This figure was reiterated by Health Secretary Matt Hancock at this evening's Downing Street briefing.
And Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) group, said he is hopeful two vaccinated people will be able to embrace from midsummer.
Speaking to Times Radio this morning, he said: "If you're both vaccinated, of course...my hope is that as we move towards that June date, we will be in a position that we can not just see our loved ones, but also we can hug our loved ones because it's been a very long time since we've been able to do that."
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He went on to say: "I think this is really difficult because of course, in a sense, this becomes more of a sort of a political decision rather than an epidemiological decision because we have been told that on June 21 all of these legal limits on contact will be removed, but it's still unclear exactly what that means.
"Whether that means that on that date some social distancing will be in place or whether all of those will be removed and you'll be able to go and hug your loved ones."
He added that there will need to be ongoing monitoring of the data, particularly in relation to when two households or six people from multiple households can mix indoors again.
Speaking at the Downing Street press briefing on Wednesday, Mr Hancock said the presence of antibodies was a "measure of the protection that we have collectively built up right across the country".
He said: "In the older age groups, those who got vaccinated first are much more likely to have Covid-19 antibodies.
"Now seven in 10 adults have protective Covid-19 antibodies, this is the vaccination programme in action."
The ONS numbers are up from 53.1 percent two weeks before, emphasising the success of the jabs roll-out which has seen almost 34 million Brits having had at least one dose and 13.2 million two.
The data was taken from random blood tests of up to 20,000 adults across the UK.
Northern Ireland saw 62.5 percent of participants having the proteins, while Wales had 61 percent and Scotland 57.8 percent.
It comes after research by Public Health England (PHE), involving 1.5 million adults, found one dose of the Pfizer vaccine were 49 percent less likely to spread the virus within their household if they caught it.
While it was also announced today the NHS app will double as a Covid passport for British tourists to prove their status abroad from next month.
