Andrew Marr asks Hancock if he is sure we should be going ahead with tomorrow's lifting of some restrictions given the spread of the Indian variant.

Hancock replies: "Yes I am confident we can take the step tomorrow but we should all be careful about how we take that step."

Marr asks if Hancock regrets not putting India on the red list on 9 April.

Marr says that before this happened, 20,000 people came to the UK from India and according to Public Health England 122 of them were carrying the virus, so if the system was working that would not have happened.

Hancock says: "We can only make decisions based on the evidence that we have at the time and the evidence we had at the time was that the positivity of people coming from India was low at the start of April and it then rose. And when we saw it rising we brought in the red list restrictions that was before we knew about this new variant as even a variant under investigation."

A "frail" person who had both coronavirus vaccines was hospitalised with the indian variant in Bolton, the health secretary says.

Five people who had had one Covid jab were also hospitalised in Bolton with the Indian variant, he told Andrew Marr.

He says he is not aware of anyone who has died after having both vaccines and catching the Indian variant.

"All this demonstrates that the best thing that we can do is get the vaccinations out including those second jabs and in the areas where are seeing infections rise we are throwing testing at it," he says.

Cooper calls for the regular publication of the government's assessment of green, amber and red list countries - and to make clear the criteria these decisions are based on.

She says that "as we are now, I don't think that this is possible to be lifting restrictions [on foreign travel] at a time when we've got so many new variants".

The MP hails the South Korean model of home quarantine for those arriving into the UK as being "more flexible" as we move through summer.

And she says that, if the price of being able to hug loved ones this summer is "having stronger restrictions at our border, that is the right thing to do".

Cooper says her view is that the UK should have had "proper testing" and other restrictions at the border from March 2020 "because we should have been learning lessons from what was happening in Australia, New Zealand, and other countries".

She distances herself from the views of the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his frontbench, prefering instead to outline how she would like the government to respond.

"I think the Labour Party did start to call for stronger restrictions but you asked me for my views and I was certainly calling for those stronger restrictions to be in place," she tells Andrew Marr.

Cooper says she wanted to see the system of home quarantine tightened throughout last summer and stronger testing.

"It's the government in the end that's in charge of this... they should have put India on the red list at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh," she says.

Labour's Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, says the government is in a "very difficult position on trust" as pandemic restrictions ease at the same time as the India variant grows.

She tells BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "I think we shouldn't be in this situation in the first place because this was not inevitable and they should have taken action on the India variant much earlier, they should have put it on the red list [earlier]."

Cooper says the priority now needs to be placed on surge vaccinations, surge testing and support for those who are required to self-isolate.

The senior MP feels "worried" but knows businesses have prepared for the next easing of restrictions on Monday and so she said it was right to focus on supporting hotspot areas rather than delaying the lifting of curbs.

The import of the Indian variant into the UK could have been delayed but not avoided, a leading scientist says.

Andrew Marr asks Prof John Edmunds how much more transmissible the Indian variant is compared to the Kent variant.

Prof Edmunds says: "The evidence is stacking up that it is more transmissible, it is very hard to tell how much more."

He says the places where it is taking off tend to have seen higher rates of transmission generally.

Marr asks whether the prime minister should rethink tomorrow morning's changes to restrictions.

Prof Edumnds says: "I think they have to monitor this very carefully... if things look like they are getting worse rapidly action needs to be taken."

Asked if he thinks all restrictions will end on 21 June, he says "at the moment it's a bit too early to say" but we will know more in the coming weeks.

Marr asks if all of this could have been avoided if we had closed the border to India more quickly.

Prof Edmunds says: "I don't think it could have been avoided, we could have delayed things a little bit."

Many of the Indian variant cases discovered in parts of the UK so far are associated with travel from India, a leading scientist says.

Prof John Edmunds, who advises the government, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show the effect of travel restrictions on India would likely "tail off" now - and it will require "old fashioned, shoe leather epidemiology" to find out where cases are coming from.

Some parts of the UK may have community transmission and the variant has "seeded quite widely" and is "likely to become dominant soon", he adds.

He says the vaccines almost certainly work well to prevent severe disease, but there may still be mild disease - with some people who have been vaccinated becoming unwell.

"We don't have very much good data against this particular variant," he adds.

Image source, Sky

Surge vaccination could do "more harm than good" and disrupt the rollout across the country, JCVI member Professor Adam Finn says.

Sky's Sophy Ridge asks him what we know about how effective vaccines are against the Indian variant.

He says: "It's difficult to be very definite about this particular variant and the vaccines...but the one piece of reassuring news is that we are seeing consistently good protection against severe disease with different vaccines and different variants so far". He says scientists are confident this will continue to be the case with the Indian variant.

He says they do not yet know the impact of vaccines on milder disease and transmission through the population.

Sophy Ridge asks if he thinks it is right to prioritise vaccines in hotspots where we have seen the Indian variant, like Bolton and Blackburn.

Prof Finn says the JCVI had a "lot of discussion" on this topic.

He says: "The real concern is because vaccine supply at the moment is the rate limiting step if you start moving the vaccine around from one place to another, or one group to another, you risk disrupting the overall protection of the population and you end up chasing the virus around and always arriving too late."

He says: "Vaccines are a really useful tool to prevent waves of infection, they're not terribly good at preventing infection while they are in full swing."

"Our conclusion was that it would probably do more harm than good if we made the programme more complicated, more difficult to deliver and basically slowed things down elsewhere."

Analysis: Ministers keen to push back on India criticismpublished at 09:15 British Summer Time 16 May 2021

09:15 BST 16 May 2021

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

On Monday in England, and on time, is step three of the government's easing of coronavirus restrictions.

It will see the reopening of indoor hospitality and entertainment venues, the reopening of our homes to friends, the lifting of most social contact rules outside, the return of hugs.

But the prospect of all of this collides with huge questions about the so-called Indian variant, and just how easily it is spread.

Some of the government's scientific advisers fret that its potential transmissibility, coupled with a lot more socialising, could have grave consequences, although it's acknowledged much is still unknown; the data is partial.

But ministers are keen to push back on claims they acted too late in restricting travel from India, pointing out that it was six days after the country was put on the red list that the variant now causing alarm was first put under investigation and a week after that before it was labelled a "variant of concern".

A spokesman said the decision to add countries to the red list was based on what they called "extensive consideration of the type of cases that are imported, rather than the amount".

Several of Sunday's papers look ahead to the further lifting of lockdown restrictions in England on Monday, amid concerns over the Indian coronavirus variant.

The Observer says PM Boris Johnson is under increasing pressure to reconsider the relaxation of measures due to the threat posed by the variant.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the government is planning to ramp up vaccinations in order to jab up to a million people a day "and save the British summer".

Ministers have told MPs the daily doses can be "safely" upped from 500,000 to 800,000 within the next two weeks, using a stockpile of 3.2 million doses in England.

Senior MPs have urged the PM not to "panic" over the Indian variant, to "believe in the vaccination programme" and to stick to the roadmap out of lockdown, the Sunday Express reports.

Read more in our review of Sunday's newspapers here.

There's good reason to be concerned about the Indian coronavirus variant, says former chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge: "There's a high degree of concern that this is more transmissible and a realistic possibility that the increased tramissibilty is 50%".

"There are clearly grounds for concern", he says. But there is also "substantial uncertainty" and the government is "always having to make decisions in the face of incomplete evidence".

Walport would not be drawn on whether he thought it was the right decison to go ahead with tomorrow's unlocking.

But he says the most important thing was fresh air in addition to the hands, face, space advice.

Image source, Sky News

Matt Hancock says he "very much hopes" the government will not need to "row back" on the next easing of restrictions in England, due to take place on Monday.

Asked by Sky's Sophy Ridge whether a reversal in England's roadmap out of lockdown was possible, Hancock said: "Our goal remains, our strategy remains to take a cautious and irreversable approach, to make sure we're looking at the data all the way through, and crucially to use the vaccine to get us out of this pandemic."

He said the news and data on the Indian variant "tells us actually that our strategy remains on track", but warned that "the variant has got more legs" in the race between it and the vaccination programme.

"It's only on track because of the very, very high uptake rates of the vaccine," he added, saying that "the people who are ending up in hospital in Bolton with this new variant are largely people who are eligible for the vaccine but haven't taken the vaccine".

Sophy Ridge tells Matt Hancock if the Indian variant is 40-50% more transmissible than the Kent variant, scientists have told the government it's likely to cause a substantial rise in the number of hospitalisations.

She asks: "Why are we proceeding with the reopening tomorrow?"

Hancock says if that is the case then we will have a "real problem" but he says if it that is not the case then there will be almost no impact on the roadmap. "We just don't yet know," he says.

"So that's why it's appropriate to continue down the roadmap and people need to be cautious and careful," he says.

"We are moving the balance more towards people taking personal responsibility and getting away from some of the more intrusive rules," he says.

Image source, Sky News

New data indicates the UK's coronavirus vaccines are effective against preventing serious illness from the Indian variant, the health secretary says.

Matt Hancock told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday the "very early data" was from Oxford University's labs so it was not clinical data but says it "does give us a degree of confidence that vaccines work".

But he says the Indian variant is more transmissible and can "spread like wildfire among the unvaccinated".

Hancock says it is becoming the dominant strain in parts of the country like Bolton and Blackburn.

"One of the advantages we now have compared to December when we saw the Kent variant coming up is we have the vaccine programme... surveillance and testing," he says.

"That means we can stay on course with our strategy of using the vaccine and opening up carefully and cautiously but we need to be vigilant for the spread of the disease," he says.

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said even though the rules were being eased for many of us on Monday, he would not be visiting his newborn first grandchild.

He cited concerns over the Indian virus variant as one of the reasons people should continue to be cautious even though curbs are lifting.

Speaking from France, where he is currently working, he told BBC Breakfast: “I have to say honestly that it worries me a great deal, we may be dealing with a significantly more infectious virus, there’s a high level of uncertainty around that but it is certainly a possibility.

“And I can tell you that I, for one, when I am back in the UK next week, will be keeping myself to myself and not mixing with other people, and encouraging my family and friends to do likewise.

“I think in the context we are now people should be being cautious, I think we really need to understand what’s going on better and I would urge people to be very cautious about mixing in the next couple of weeks.”

Despite sounding a note of caution, Prof Finn said people in the UK continued to show great willingness to get the vaccine and that supplies were being used quickly without delays.

We’ll soon be hearing from Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who is appearing on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show at 09:00 BST.

The health secretary is expected to be asked about criticism from opposition parties around the timing of the decision to ban travel from Covid-hit India last month.

Yvette Cooper - who as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee has put the government under pressure over its border policy - will represent Labour.

Professor John Edmunds, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the government’s Sage advisory group, will also give his view on the situation.

Let’s take a look at the main coronavirus developments so far this morning:

• The UK government has defended its decision not to ban travel from India sooner - after a surge in cases of a new variant first found there
• Cases of the Indian variant have more than doubled in the past week, according to data - as outbreaks in Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, in the North West of England, prompt concern
• England is preparing to relax Covid restrictions on Monday - in what has been billed as the biggest single step out of lockdown - as rules also change in Wales and most of Scotland
• But government scientific advisers have said that if the Indian variant spreads faster than the current virus type, easing restrictions could lead to a wave of hospitalisations
• A "surge" in vaccination bookings in England ahead of the rule changes has seen more than 600,000 people booking appointments in the past two days
• Almost one in 10 restaurants across Britain have closed for good since the pandemic began, research suggests
• The boss of the world's busiest airport for international passengers, Dubai, has said Covid passports are the only way to restart mass foreign travel
• Virus experts have told the BBC what they will and won’t be doing from Monday

Hello and welcome to our live coronavirus coverage this Sunday. We’ll bring you the latest developments as they happen.