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Coronavirus: Lockdown easing in England 'modest' - Jenrick

The government is taking "modest" steps in easing lockdown restrictions, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has said.

He said he was "reasonably confident" the measures would be "manageable" but the room for manoeuvre was limited.

From Monday in England primary schools will start to reopen and people can meet in groups of up to six.

Meanwhile, vulnerable people in England and Wales will be able to go outdoors for the first time in months.

Mr Jenrick's comments come after some scientific advisers voiced concerns about the timing of the changes.

Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, he confirmed the updated guidance on shielding which will mean that people who have been advised to stay home since the lockdown began will now be able to go outside either with members of their household or to meet someone from another household.

But Mr Jenrick said people in this group should only do what they are comfortable with, adding that the advice would be tightened again if conditions became "less favourable".

It comes as another 113 people have died in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus.

It takes the total number of people who have died after testing positive to 38,489.

Meanwhile, the UK has exceeded its target to increase coronavirus testing capacity to 200,000 a day by the end of May.

Some 205,634 tests were available on Saturday, the government confirmed.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock described it as "an important milestone on our journey to control the spread of the virus".

While capacity for testing is over 200,000, a little more than 115,000 tests were carried out in the 24 hours up to 09:00 BST on Sunday.

For several days, the government has been unable to give figures on the exact number of people who were tested.

The UK now has capacity for 40,000 antibody tests a day, the Department for Health and Social Care confirmed.

The tests, which determine whether someone has had the virus, are currently only available to health and care staff.

Do we have enough tests?

At the start of the coronavirus outbreak the UK's limited testing capacity was dwarfed by the number of possible new infections.

Lockdown had to quickly be imposed to stop the virus spreading and overwhelming the NHS.

Testing capacity has been ramped up significantly in recent weeks. As of 30 May, 115,725 tests were carried out.

The bulk were community swab tests for people concerned about symptoms and wanting to know if they have the virus.

Although rates of the infection have decreased substantially with lockdown, the virus has not disappeared from society.

People can still catch it and experts believe 8,000 a day in England currently are.

As lockdown eases, a new system called test and trace is being used to help keep the virus under control - identifying possible outbreaks.

Having enough tests on offer will be vital, as well as getting rapid results back so people can be informed if they might have the virus and therefore need to stay at home to stop the spread.

Widespread testing forms a central part of the government's strategy to control the virus, as it aims to ease blanket lockdown in favour of more targeted measures.

Earlier, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab defended the easing of the lockdown in England, despite the country's Covid-19 alert system indicating high levels of virus transmission.

The UK's R value - the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to, on average - is currently between 0.7 and 0.9. If it goes above 1.0 the number of cases will increase exponentially, but if it stays below then the disease will eventually peter out.

Mr Jenrick said the government would not go ahead with some of the plans to further ease lockdown if R rose above one "or dangerously close to it".

"We're going to be doing this in a cautious and data-driven way in the days and weeks ahead," he said.