Coronavirus: Government to announce further lockdown easing this week, Hancock says

Boris Johnson is also expected to ease two-metre social distancing rules

Matt Hancock has said a further relaxation of the coronavirus lockdown will be set out later this week, with ministers also set to ease the two-metre social distancing guidelines.

Insisting the strategy to curb the spread of coronavirus was “working”, the health secretary said the government was “on track” to reopen businesses in the hospitality industry, including pubs and restaurants, by 4 July.

Appearing on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Hancock said: “I think we are about to see another step in the plan and this week we will announce further details of the measures that we can take to relieve some of the national lockdown measures at the start of July.”

Following clear hints from prime minister regarding the relaxation of the two-metre social distancing guidelines, he added: “That review will come to bear this week and we will be setting out further details this week on the measures in that space.”

The health secretary said that other measures such as perspex screens and masks would be used to mitigate the risk of increasing the transmission rate of Covid-19 if the social distancing guidelines are reduced to one metre.

“The measures that we’re setting out later this week will undoubtedly help with schools,” he added. “With other further mitigations in place, absolutely, further safety measures alongside a change in the distance. That’s how they’ve done it in Northern Ireland.”

Questioned on whether Labour would support the relaxation of the two-metre rule, the shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told the BBC: “Yes, under certain circumstances. But we also need to see a greater use of face masks, I would’ve thought.”

“As I’ve said, certain staff, workers who are very public-facing in their day-to-day action, perhaps greater use of face shielding, let’s get testing and tracing up and running,” he said.

In a separate interview, Mr Hancock declined to put a date on when the government would roll out a contact tracing app – viewed as critical in curbing the spread of the virus – after custom-made technology was dropped earlier this week.

Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said: “We don’t have a launch date and until we do I’m just going to work hard to get it as soon as possible.”

The cabinet minister also said Apple would not make a change required to enable the government’s coronavirus app to work and accused the firm of being “intransigent in the past”.

Sir Ian Diamond, the head of the Office of National Statistics (ONS), also told the BBC said the UK is moving into a period of “surveillance” in order to identify any outbreaks and “move to get on top of them really, really quickly”.

He told the BBC that current data suggests around 3.5 million people in the UK have either had the coronavirus or have natural antibodies to it. “My own belief is that the virus is going to be with us for a very long time and we are going to have to be absolutely vigilant to check we are on top of the outbreaks which will come,” he added.