As it happened: Delta variant is around 40% more transmissible - Hancock - BBC News
The variant first identified in India makes things harder, the health secretary says, and he's "open" to delaying the 21 June unlocking.
Eradicating Covid not a reasonable target now - WHO envoy

It will be a while until we see the end of Covid, the World Health Organisation's special envoy on the disease has told Sky News. "Eradication is currently not a reasonable target for the world," Dr David Nabarro said. "Humanity is going to have to learn how to co-exist with this virus, preventing it from spiking and then surging and causing hotspots of disease, and we're going to have to be able to do this for the foreseeable future," he added. "This virus isn't going away anytime soon, there will be variants emerging." His comments were echoed by Dame Anne Johnson, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, also on the channel. Dame Anne said people would not want the lifting of restrictions to carry on being delayed; instead the aim must be to minimise the amount of severe diseases that the virus causes. She added that any reopening would be a "very finely judged decision" and that next week would be "absolutely critical" for gathering data on infections in the UK to decide whether the lockdown should be extended.