Latest updates: health secretary says Delta variant appears 40% more transmissible; Lisa Nandy says robust quarantine needed for people arriving in UK
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12.07pm BST
Matt Hancock has formally denied the claim from Dominic Cummings that he incorrectly promised people discharged from hospitals to care homes were being tested for Covid at the start of the pandemic, saying: “No, I did not.”
The rejection, after lengthy questioning on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, follows the health secretary’s previous refusal to deny explicitly the claim in the Commons and at a Downing Street press conference, a day after Cummings’ explosive claims to MPs.
Related: Matt Hancock denies Dominic Cummings’ Covid care homes claim
11.55am BST
Eradicating the world from Covid-19 is not a “reasonable target”, a World Health Organization Covid-19 official has said.
Dr David Nabarro, a special envoy to the WHO, said people will have to learn to live with the disease, comments which were echoed by Dame Anne Johnson, a professor of infection disease epidemiology at University College London (UCL).
Continue reading… Source: The Guardian: Covid live: UK under-30s to be invited for jabs this week; Labour calls for ‘amber list’ to be axed ———