Covid news live: Face masks will no longer be compulsory after this month, Cabinet minister says

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has said that the government hopes to see a “return to normality as far as possible” later this month despite concerns about rising Covid-19 cases across the UK.

“We have been living now for 18 months with extraordinary restrictions of one kind or another,” Mr Jenrick told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show earlier today.

“It does look as if, thanks to the success of the vaccine programme, that we now have the scope to roll back those restrictions and return to normality as far as possible.”

He added: “We should all be prepared though that cases may continue to rise, they may continue to rise significantly but we do now have to move into a different period where we learn to live with the virus, we take precautions and we as individuals take personal responsibility.”

The minister was also asked whether the change from legal restrictions to personal responsibility could cause social tensions, as some people choose to continue wearing masks as others do not.

You can find his comments on that issue below:

More than half of all UK residents have now had two doses of a Covid vaccine, according to the latest official figures.

Government data shows at least 33,602,136 people have had both vaccine doses, of an estimated population of 67,081,234.

When just adults are counted, more than 63 per cent of the population have now received both doses.

A group of business leaders has urged ministers to “set the country clearly on the path to recovery” by encouraging people to return to the office, the BBC has reported.

They said: “Our economic recovery will only succeed if the government commits to reviving our city centres.”

Current guidance tells people to work from home where possible.

The letter, signed by Heathrow and Gatwick airport chief executives John Holland-Kaye and Stewart Wingate, Capita chief executive Jon Lewis and BT boss Philip Jansen, said: “At this critical moment, we believe that it is essential that the government is unambiguous in its communications that when the stage four restrictions lift, public transport is safe, offices are safe, and working from home is no longer the default,” they said.

“Employers can then move forward with plans for new ways of working, considering the needs of their staff, clients and customers.”

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has called for the gap between first and second vaccinations to be halved to four weeks to deal with the “out of control” spread of coronavirus.

Mr Sarwar pointed to guidance from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which suggests that vaccines can be effective when the two doses are administered just four weeks apart.

“We need a plan now for dealing with this – and the clear route out of this is speeding up the vaccination effort,” he said.

“By cutting the waiting time between first and second doses, we can get people protected faster and ensure our response to the pandemic is keeping pace with the crisis.”

Yesterday, however, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advised that second doses should be given no earlier than eight weeks after a first jab, citing evidence showing that the longer interval provides higher levels of protection than the usual three-week gap.

You can read more about yesterday’s warning here:

The NHS is prepared to vaccinate children should the government choose to allow them, the national medical director for NHS England said.

Speaking on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show Professor Stephen Powis said: “The NHS is prepared to vaccinate children.

“Of course, that is a decision for the Government based on guidance from JCVI.

“We vaccinate children against flu each autumn so it’s something that we’re well used to doing.”

He also confirmed that children can suffer from long Covid, adding that there will be “a number of paediatrics of children’s hubs” in the 89 clinics established by the NHS to manage demand from people suffering from long Covid across the country.

Robert Jenrick said he hoped that the UK could move together when lifting Covid restrictions but acknowledged the picture was different across the Union.

When asked whether Wales and Scotland would follow England’s example on July 19 by BBC’s Andrew Marr this morning, Jenrick said he doesn’t know.

“We would like the whole of the Union to move as one. We are going to work with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to try and be as coordinated as possible,” he said. “Cases are slightly different in each of the four nations but certainly in England, our view is that things are looking positive for July 19.”

Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, said the link between coronavirus, severe hospital admissions and deaths is “weakened” but not entirely “broken”.

He added that certain habits would be “really good” to keep after the pandemic when coronavirus becomes “endemic”.

Speaking to Andrew Marr on BBC One, he said: “Public Health England are monitoring the data carefully and are reporting that vaccines give over 90 percent protection against severe disease, in other words, hospitalisation, so the link is not totally broken, but it’s severely weakened.”

He said that some habits picked up during the pandemic, such as frequent hand washing and not going to work if people are feeling unwell, would be “really good” to maintain.

Mr Powis said: “I think most people recognise that Covid will become an endemic disease, in other words, it will become one of the many viruses that we see particularly over the winter when the frequency is higher.”

Professor Adam Finn, from the Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) told Sky News that he will continue to wear face masks “indefinitely.”

He said this despite the news that mask-wearing will no longer be enforced by next month.

Speaking from Portugal, he told Trevor Phillips: “Well on a personal level I shall certainly be continuing to wear a mask if I’ve got any symptoms or if I’m in an enclosed space with lots of other people for a prolonged period of time, indefinitely in fact.”

He said: “…As paediatricians, we learned that we can avoid massive problems with children getting sick in the winter by doing these kind of measures,” Finn said.

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has said that mask-wearing will become a matter of “personal responsibility” once restrictions lift.

When asked about the reports that mask-wearing will no longer be enforced after 19 July, Mr Jenrick said the government doesn’t want restrictions to stay in place “a day longer than is necessary.”

He added: “We are going to move into a period where there won’t be legal restrictions…but you will want to exercise a degree of personal responsibility and judgement.”

He said the Prime Minister will “set more detail on the national policy on some of those restrictions in the coming days.”

Read the full story here:

Speaking on Sky News this morning, housing secretary Robert Jenrick said that, while we will “have to learn to live with the virus,” we will eventually move towards a “more permissive regime”.

He added that the “enormous success” of the vaccine programme and the “positive data” currently being reviewed by Boris Johnson means we can begin to “move away from many of those restrictions which have been so difficult for us.”

He said: “We’re going to have to make sure that every adult gets double-vaxxed as that is the key to keeping the virus under control as we move into the autumn and winter.”