Rishi Sunak is 'determined' to avoid another lockdown in Autumn

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Due to a spike in Delta variant Covid cases, which first emerged in India, scientists have urged the Prime Minister to delay an end to England’s lockdown measures. But the audience member noted the Government had promised June 21 would be “irreversible”.

An audience member of the Fiona Bruce-hosted show pointed out that university students will be heading home shortly, which could mean greater transmission.

She added: “I certainly feel very uneasy about going into a supermarket without wearing a facemask, I will still continue to do so but you can’t legislate for other people.

“Whilst we have a variant on our hands which is demonstrating to be extremely contagious, I think we need to be very mindful of how we manage that.

“I don’t think anyone would have an issue with continuing the restrictions we’ve currently got. We do have a degree of freedom that we haven’t had in lockdown, and I think if everyone is happy that it keeps them and their family safe, they’ll continue to respect that a lot more.

“We just need to be measured, and we need to follow the science, and I think the Government should really be mindful of overpromising and under delivering when they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The Prime Minister will make an announcement on whether June 21 can go ahead on Monday, but has previously said it is “too early” to call.

Ahead of his meeting with US President Joe Biden, the Prime Minister said: “On Monday…we’ll have a look at where we are.

“I think what everybody can see very clearly is that cases are going up, and in some cases hospitalisations are going up.

“What we need to assess is the extent to which the vaccine rollout, which has been phenomenal, has built up protection in the population in order for us to go ahead to the next stage. And so that’s what we’ll be looking at.”

Sir Charles Walker, Tory MP for Broxbourne, told BBC Newsnight Brits will be “disappointed” if June 21 is delayed.

He added: “If we can’t open up the economy at the height of summer then I think we’re facing a very real prospect of more forced lockdowns in the autumn.

“I just don’t see how we can avoid that.”

He later said: “We seem to have moved from the statement ‘living with Covid’ to ‘zero Covid’ and the goal posts, as we’ve always said it’s a well-worn cliche, are moving.

“People need to ask themselves – if we’re going to be locked down into mid to end July, how is it going to be conceivable that in the flu season in October, November, December that we won’t have forced lockdowns running for many months, and I think that should be of a really great concern to people.”

Yesterday saw another 7,393 cases and 7 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test.

As of writing, the UK has seen 4,542,986 cases and 127,867 deaths.

Yesterday also saw another 176,559 first doses and 316,258 second doses of coronavirus vaccine administered.

In total, the UK has administered 40,886,878 first doses and 28,857,102 second doses, equalling 77.6 percent and 54.8 percent of the population respectively.

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