Covid UK news – live: PM to confirm 19 July ‘Freedom Day

The prime minister of the Netherlands has apologised for lifting restrictions too soon, after being forced to reimpose curbs on bars, restaurants and nightclubs just two weeks after they were relaxed amid an “unprecedented” surge in infections.

“What we thought would be possible, turned out not to be possible in practice,” Mark Rutte told reporters on Monday. “We had poor judgement, which we regret and for which we apologise.”

“Two weeks ago all signals were on green,” Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge said on Friday as the U-turn was announced. “But now there’s a reason to intervene. This is a result of the rapid spread of the Delta variant in Europe and the Netherlands,” he said.

“This is unprecedented. The previous week we sat at around 500 new cases per day. Today there are 7,000 new infections,” Mr de Jonge said.

The Scottish Government must show “urgency and ambition” on vaccinations and contact tracing if there is to be no delay in easing restrictions, Scottish Labour has said, warning that the planned lifting of measures from next Monday “hangs in the balance”.

Ahead of an announcement tomorrow by Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie called for “immediate action” to tackle the pandemic, including cutting the eight-week wait between vaccine doses to four weeks.

“The SNP has lost control of the pandemic and our exit from lockdown hangs in the balance,” she said. |We need immediate action that meets the scale of the crisis before us.

Urging Holyrood to cut the gap between vaccine doses to four weeks, in line with WHO guidance, Ms Baillie added: “We are also calling on the government to get a grip of our failing Test and Protect system and instead of cutting corners and lowering standards, do all that they can to support the staff in their efforts.”

Ending compulsory mask-wearing guidance could cause confusion and undermine efforts to bring the spread of Covid-19 under control, Government scientific advisers have warned.

The warning comes as Boris Johnson prepares to confirm the full lifting of remaining Covid-19 restrictions starting from 19 July, including mandatory use of face coverings on public transport and in certain areas.

A pre-inquest mention hearing into the death of Belly Mujinga, a railway worker who died after reportedly being coughed on and spat at by a man claiming to have coronavirus, is taking place today.

The British Transport Police (BTP) had investigated the railway worker’s death after she died with Covid-19 in April of last year.

However, they concluded that her death was not linked to the prior incident and closed the case.

Earlier this year however, North London coroner Andrew Walker said an inquest was needed into Ms Mujinga’s death.

The decision came after her family campaigned for an inquest, with a petition gaining widespread traction in the UK.

Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), has said that while there are advantages to getting second Covid-19 vaccine doses early, the gap between jabs should not be reduced below eight weeks.

“There is of course an advantage in giving the second dose early, in the current circumstances with all the cases that we are seeing because you get a further boost, but the downside to that is the size of that boost is smaller and probably that will mean that the duration of protection you get from that second dose will be shorter,” Mr Finn said, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.

“So there’s a sweet spot, and at the moment the advice we have given is we should not reduce the interval less than eight weeks,” he said.

A 90-year-old woman in Belgium was infected with two different coronavirus variants at the same time, researchers have found, in what is one of the first documented cases of its kind.

Despite showing no initial signs of respiratory distress, she soon deteriorated and died five days after her admission.

Our science correspondent Samuel Lovett has more details:

“We don’t think that all of the restrictions should be lifted in one go on 19 July because we think that’s reckless at a time when infections are rising rapidly. We need to take a balanced approach,” Labour’s Jo Stevens has told ITV News.

“So there are certain things that should stay in place like mandatory mask wearing on public transport and in health and social care settings. We still need to sort out payments for people who have to self-isolate.

“And to do what has been suggested – a kind of blanket lifting of restrictions, when we know that infection rates are going up and up and up, and the government have admitted as such, that it would be reckless to do that.”