The planned scrapping of remaining restrictions in England<\/a> on 21 June has been thrown into doubt with reports that the government is looking at contingency plans including a two-week delay to allow more adults to be fully vaccinated.<\/p>\n The Telegraph and the Financial Times reported on Saturday that civil servants were drawing up contingency plans to delay the easing lockdown restrictions by two weeks, possibly to 5 July.<\/p>\n A senior Whitehall source told the FT: \u201cA variety of options are being drawn up, including a delay to step 4 and trading off some measures against others.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Telegraph, a two-week delay to the final stage of Boris Johnson\u2019s roadmap will be accompanied by bringing forward the second doses of vaccination for over-40s.<\/p>\n Prof Stephen Reicher, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, which advises the government, told the Press Association it would be \u201cfoolish\u201d and a \u201cmajor risk\u201d to end restrictions this month.<\/p>\n \u201cI think by the government\u2019s own criteria it\u2019s quite clear that it would be foolish to proceed on the data that we\u2019ve got at the moment,\u201d he said. \u201cThe risk would be very great indeed. Again, I make the point that it is about data not dates, and if you make it too much about the dates then you box yourself into a corner and I think that\u2019s what the government has done.\u201d<\/p>\n Office for National Statistics data on Friday suggested infection levels in England had risen by about 75% in a week, with 85,600 people thought to have had Covid in the week ending 29 May \u2013 or one in 640 people \u2013 compared with 48,500 the week before.<\/p>\n On Friday, the UK also recorded its highest number<\/a> of new confirmed coronavirus cases in a single day since late March, at 6,238. The estimated R number for England is now 1.0 to 1.2, up from 1.0 to 1.1 last week.<\/p>\n But Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, raised hopes that the situation in hospitals was not as critical as in previous waves of the pandemic. He said the number of people in hospital with the Delta variant, first detected in India, was not increasing \u201cvery significantly\u201d.<\/p>\n He told BBC Breakfast that many of those in hospital in Bolton, which has the highest number of cases of the Delta variant in England, were younger people and \u201ca lot less at risk of very serious complication, less at risk of death, and what that means is that they were less demand on critical care.\u201d<\/p>\n The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Friday it was too early to say what the decision would be regarding 21 June, \u201cbut we\u2019ll make sure people know in good time\u201d. He said the government \u201calways expected cases to rise\u201d as lockdown was eased, and ministers were being \u201ctough\u201d on international travel rules to preserve the route out of lockdown in the UK by preventing new variants from taking hold.<\/p>\n