Image source, Getty Images

We've been hearing a lot this morning about the Covid vaccine rollout in England, as it is extended to people aged 23 and 24 from today.

The gap between doses for over-40s in England will now be eight weeks rather than 12, the government has said, and by 19 July, all adults aged 18 and over will be offered first doses - two weeks earlier than planned.

But how have the UK's other nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland been getting on?

• In Scotland, people aged 30 and over can book a vaccine, external, although in some parts of Glasgow, people aged 18 and over can get a first jab
• In Wales, people aged 18 and over can get the vaccine, external. The Welsh government says all adults will have been offered their first dose by 14 June

• In Northern Ireland, people aged 18 and over can book online , externalor call 0300 200 7813

You can read more about the UK's vaccine rollout in our explainer here.

Image source, Reuters

GP practices in Northern Ireland will contact patients who have not come forward for vaccines, with people over-40 and those who have clinical risk factors among the groups being targeted.

They will be contacted by telephone, text or letter by GP practices and encouraged to consider vaccination.

Pop-up vaccination clinics will also be visiting different parts of Northern Ireland in the coming weeks to make it easier for people to access a jab.

The Department of Health says it would help address potential barriers to vaccination such as mobility, accessibility and language.

"Vaccination is, of course, voluntary," Health Minister Robin Swann says. "It is important that people make informed choices and that any concerns they may have are sensitively addressed."

Image source, BBC Sport

Wimbledon's men's and women's finals will be played in front of full capacity crowds - the first UK outdoor sporting events to do so since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The tournament, starting on 28 June, will begin with 50% ground capacity.

That will then rise throughout the tournament before the two finals on the 15,000-capacity Centre Court.

Wembley will also be able to host matches at 50% capacity - around 45,000 - for the knockout stages of Euro 2020.

Read more from BBC Sport here.

Sir Simon adds that he has asked the health service to "gear up" for future Covid treatments, set to come online in the next few months.

"We expect that we will begin to see further therapies that will actually treat coronavirus and prevent severe illness and death.

"Today I'm asking the health service to gear up for what are likely to be a new category of such treatments - so-called neutralising monoclonal antibodies - which are potentially going to become available to us within the next several months."

He adds that in order for this treatment to be administered, "the full excellence" of local NHS services and integrated care systems will need to be harnessed.

"We're going to need community services that are able to deliver through regional networks this type of infusion in patients before they are hospitalised - typically within a three-day window from the date of infection."

Going back now to comments by Sir Simon Stevens, who has been speaking about how coronavirus has been affecting the NHS and how the health service is responding.

He says that just 1% of England's hospital beds are occupied by people with Covid-19 now, and that the vaccine rollout has "flipped" the age distribution of patients.

"Back in January, it was 60/40 - 60% of beds occupied by people over 65, 40% (occupied by people) under 65.

"Now it's flipped to 30/70, so it's about 30% occupied by people aged 65 and over 70% by younger people whose prospects are much greater."

This turnaround was outlined by England' Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty at Monday night's press conference.

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), says despite uncertainties around coronavirus variants, the continued vaccination drive "is moving us to a better and better place everyday".

Prof Finn said he understood why people needed dates to hold on to but "this is a process".

All adults in England should be able to book their Covid-19 jab "by the end of this week", NHS England's chief executive says.

Speaking at the NHS Confederation annual conference, Sir Simon Stevens predicts the national booking service will be open to all adults aged 18 and above by the end of the week.

He says the health service will "finish the job" of the Covid vaccination programme to the "greatest extent possible" over the next four weeks; adding that by 19 July, it aims to have offered two thirds of adults in England both vaccine doses.

He cites today's extension of the rollout to 23 and 24-year-olds as evidence of the "great strides" the health service is making towards this goal.

He adds: "Of course, vaccine supply continues to be constrained, so we're pacing ourselves at precisely the rate of which we're getting that extra vaccine supply between now and July 19."

Some 13 care home resident deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales were registered in the week to 4 June, up from 12 in the previous week.

In total, 42,511 care home residents in England and Wales have now had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate.

The ONS figures cover deaths of care home residents in all settings, not just in care homes.

This week’s figure of 108 registered Covid-19 deaths is the third lowest since the pandemic began.

Death figures reflect the state of the pandemic a month ago as people whose deaths are reported today are likely to have been infected in early May.

A total of 153,493 deaths have now occurred in the UK, where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, the Office for National Statistics says.

The highest number of deaths to occur on a single day was 1,480 on 19 January.

During the first wave of the virus, the daily death toll peaked at 1,461 deaths on 8 April 2020.

Image source, Reuters

Live music, theatre and other events have been dealt a "hammer blow" by a four-week delay to the final stage of easing lockdown restrictions in England, industry figures say.

It means the capacity of venues will remain limited by the requirements around social distancing.

The Society of London Theatre says the decision would "have serious implications for many theatres", while the Night Time Industries Association says the prime minister has "switched the lights off for an entire sector".

Mark Davyd, chief executive of the Music Venues Trust, says the government should take "swift and robust" action to prevent hundreds of potential grassroots music venue closures.

Trafalgar Entertainment's Sir Howard Panter and Dame Rosemary Squire, who have two major musicals due to open in London in late July, say the delay is "yet another bungle" from the government and described the confusion as "reminiscent of a West End farce".

The number of deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 4 June 2021 was 9,111, which was 4% below the five-year average.

Of these, 108 involved Covid-19, two more than the previous week.

The lowest registered Covid-19 deaths during the pandemic was during the week of the August Bank Holiday last year, when 83 deaths were registered.

The ONS warns that comparisons to last week’s figures and the five-year average “should be interpreted with caution” as registry offices were closed over the recent late May Bank Holiday.

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), strikes a note of optimism in his view that there is "very promising evidence" that current coronavirus vaccines are starting to break the link between infection and serious illness.

He tells BBC Breakfast: "I do think that we are seeing a position where there are fewer seriously ill people in the context of an increasing number of infections, and that's extremely encouraging."

He adds that increasing the level of vaccination in the population will enable the country to "get ahead of this current wave", which he said was "different" from previous ones, where the lockdown "simply pushed cases into the future".

The four-week delay to the final easing of restrictions is "extremely welcome" he says, adding: "We're giving ourselves time to get people immune and so those people will not get sick when the virus starts to spread about."

He adds that he hopes the four-week delay is "enough" before hinting that a decision on whether to vaccinate children is coming "quite soon".

The hospitality sector has been reacting with concern to Monday's delay of lockdown lifting.

David Whittall, who runs the nightclub and live music venue Suki10c in Digbeth, Birmingham, says he now has no way to pay the bills in June as he has to cancel a series of events he had planned.

"The sold-out events that we had booked in - that's what was going to get us through because we would have made revenue, we would have had profit, we would have been able to pay our bills. Now we don't have anything," he says, stressing the need for more government support.

Keith Marsden, the landlord of the Prince of Wales pub in Moseley, Birmingham, says social distancing rules mean he has to operate at a third of hiss pub's normal capacity and recently had his worst day of trading since he started the business, with takings of just £96.

"We're hanging in there but we're in serious trouble," he says.

Read more from other parts of the hospitality industry here.

Sage scientist Professor Graham Medley has been setting out the reasons behind the government's decision to delay.

Asked whether the country could have returned to hundreds of Covid deaths a day again had the remaining coronavirus restrictions been ended, Prof Medley he tells BBC Radio 4's Today: "Oh easily. I think we still might at some point."

He points out that "government risks are not the same as individual personal risks", adding that "government risks are primarily based upon healthcare, and whether the healthcare can continue to function."

He adds the focus of that risk is on "how many people end up in hospital, how many people end up in high dependency in hospital" and how to prevent this.

"So it's really an uncertainty at the moment, it's too early to say for sure what will happen at the peak of this next epidemic."

Challenged further on the idea that the UK could once more see hundreds of Covid deaths a day, he says it is "quite possible it is not a certainty".

"There is a lot of uncertainty, but I think that's quite possible."

Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has criticised the government's actions to contain the spread of the Delta variant, saying the reason restrictions were having to be extended was due to a delay in adding India - where the strain was first found - to the travel red list.

Ashworth tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Rather than red listing this variant, we essentially gave it the red carpet treatment as 20,000 people were allowed to arrive from India over a number of weeks in April, even though the warning signs were there.

"That essentially seeded this Delta variant across the country."

But asked whether he wished more had been done in government to halt the spread of the variant at the border, Mr Gove says ministers cannot make decisions with "perfect knowledge" and can only act "on the basis of evidence that we have".

He tells Times Radio: "We can always look back and wish that we'd done things differently but we operated on the basis of facts that we had at the time, and India was placed on the red list before the Delta variant was a variant under investigation, or a variant of concern.

"And again, you know, the decisions that ministers, that doctors, that scientists have to take can never be made with perfect knowledge.

"Hindsight, 2020 vision gives all of us an opportunity to look back and to say 'if only', but we've got to make the decision at the time, on the basis of the evidence that we have."

Image source, BBC Sport

Meanwhile, at the races, things look a bit busier...

Royal Ascot will welcome British racing's biggest crowd for 15 months as the five-day meeting starts later.

The Queen is expected to attend on the opening day, with 12,000 spectators allowed daily as part of a Covid pilot test event to see if opening up sport to big crowds works.

Palace Pier, the mount of Frankie Dettori, and Battaash are among the equine stars in action on Tuesday.

Who's in form? Read more here.

Cabinet minister Michael Gove says "it's certainly the day when we will move to stage 4, yeah" when asked by BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker if 19 July is definitely the day restrictions will stop.

He says two doses of the vaccine are highly effective protection against the Delta variant of coronavirus, which is behind the recent spike in cases.

Cabinet office minister Michael Gove says the government can be "pretty confident" that the final easing of England's Covid restrictions will go ahead on 19 July - on the basis that the four-week delay allows time to ramp up the level of Covid vaccination across the population.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he says: “I think we can be confident that we will be able to move to stage 4 on [19 July], on the basis of everything we now know.”

He points to evidence published yesterday showing current vaccines are "highly effective", particularly when given in two doses, against the Delta variant first discovered in India.

He adds: "We can be pretty confident that the time that we have will allow us to vaccinate a significantly high proportion of people and to make sure that as many people as possible have their second jab.

"That should provide, we hope, a very high level of protection."

He says as well as the increased number of vaccinations, the final easing of restrictions on 19 July will coincide with the start of the school holidays, which he says ministers are assured will bring down the virus R - or reproduction rate.

"We think this is the appropriate balance between restoring peoples’ freedom, lifting restrictions, but at the same time, doing everything we can to provide the protection necessary."

Professor Graham Medley, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) advising the government, warns that it is still possible that the nation could return to seeing hundreds of deaths a day.

"Although the numbers of deaths are low at the moment, everyone expects that they will rise. The question is really as to what level they will rise," he tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"At the moment there is a lot of uncertainty in what's going to happen over the next couple of months."

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove says it is "regrettable" that ministers had to order a delay of up to a month to the final phase of the road map.

Asked if restrictions would ease on July 19 or whether there could be another delay, Mr Gove tells Sky News: "That will be the terminus date.

"What we said is that we won't lift those restrictions before June 21, in the road map it says not before, and the whole point about the road map was to build in an element of flexibility and caution.

"It is regrettable that we do have this pause before moving to Step 4, but what we want to do is to make sure that when we do make that move, that we don't go back.

"Because the worst thing for business, worst thing for any of us, would be to open up again and then to very quickly find that we have to reimpose restrictions."