Delaying England’s Covid reopening ‘could keep thousands out of hospital’

Research backs four-week delay on lifting restrictions to allow more people to get jabs

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Ministers have been told that a four-week delay to easing all Covid restrictions would probably prevent thousands of hospitalisations, as Boris Johnson prepares to tell the English public they will have to wait up to another month for freedom day".

The government roadmap out of lockdown earmarks 21 June for the last remaining coronavirus restrictions to be lifted in England, but the prime minister is expected to announce on Monday that the timetable will be pushed back by two to four weeks amid a rapid rise in cases of the Delta variant first detected in India.