Coronavirus news – live: Covid laws extended until end of September as NHS England lowers emergency level

Conservative former cabinet minister Jeremy Wright said step three and step four of the government's roadmap out of lockdown should be merged, with "almost all" restrictions lifted by May.

Mr Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) told the Commons: "Now, I do not think that we should remove all restrictions in the next 21 days and I will vote accordingly, but I do think that we should combine steps three and four of the government's roadmap and remove almost all restrictions in May.

"An entirely precautionary approach is simply not feasible here. We know Covid will be with us for some time, perhaps indefinitely, and we cannot respond to that with indefinite restrictions any more than we would or do in response to the risk of other diseases.

"So although I support much of what the government has done and is doing in response to the pandemic, I cannot support the continuation of damaging restrictions any longer than I consider they are necessary, which I am afraid is less than the government propose in these regulations."

An estimated 98.3% of frontline NHS trust staff in England had been given at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by March 21, NHS England figures show.

The North East and Yorkshire, North West, East of England, South East and the South West were all at 100%, while London was the region with the lowest proportion at 85.1%.

NHS England has previously said areas showing 100% or more signified that the number who had received their first dose exceeded the estimated number of frontline staff and that some non-frontline staff would have received the vaccine as a result of being in other cohorts.

The data only represents those NHS trust healthcare workers who appear in the NHS electronic staff record (ESR) covering all directly employed staff in NHS trusts, with the exception of Chesterfield Royal NHS Foundation Trust.

A quarter of people in England aged 80 and over are likely to have had both doses of Covid-19 vaccine, according to NHS England figures.

An estimated 25.5 per cent of people in this age group had received both jabs as of 21 March, meaning they are fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

Some 3.5 per cent of people aged 75 to 79 are estimated to have had both doses, along with 1.5 per cent of people aged 70 to 74.

NHS England has said it will reduce the national coronavirus emergency incident level today as the number of patients in hospital continues to fall.

Our health correspondent Shaun Lintern has more updates:

Case rates in England have risen among children and teenagers, according to Public Health England.

For 10- to 19-year-olds, the rate stood at 100.7 cases per 100,000 in the seven days to 21 March, the highest rate among the age groups and up week-on-week from 79.7.

Among five- to nine-year-olds, it rose from 39.9 to 63.5, but for children aged four and under it fell from 34.9 to 32.4.

All other age groups showed a week-on-week drop in rates.

The United States has surpassed 30 million confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to a tally.

It comes within two weeks of the country marking an entire year of the pandemic, and measures put in place to control the virus in all 50 states and US territories.

Gino Spocchia has more details:

Matt Hancock has said the success of the country's vaccination programme means that restrictions can be "carefully" replaced.

Opening a debate on the coronavirus regulations in the Commons, the health secretary said: "Today we debate our road map to recovery and what is legally needed to take the cautious but irreversible path our of this pandemic.

"We propose to remove some of the emergency powers that the House put in place a year ago and set the steps of the road map that the Prime Minister has set out into law, replacing the existing national lockdown."

He continued: "The success of this vaccination programme means that we are now able to carefully replace the short-term protection of restrictions we've all endured with the long-term protection provided by the vaccine."

No 10 said it was "not going to get into supply chain details" when asked whether the UK was prepared to share domestically produced vaccine doses with Brussels in order to solve the ongoing supply row.

The prime minister's official spokesman said the spike in cases in Europe demonstrated the need to work on an international basis to "defeat this pandemic".

He told reporters: "I would point to the fact we are continuing to work closely with the EU.

"As our (joint) statement said, we are all facing the same pandemic and the third wave makes co-operation between the EU and UK even more important.

"As I say, we will continue to work with the EU in terms of the short, medium and long-term steps we may be able to take to expand vaccine supply for everyone, not just here but across the world as well."

More than half of Israel’s population have now received both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, as the state continues to open up its economy.

Health minister Yuli Edelstein revealed 50.07 per cent of the overall population have now received both vaccine doses, and 55.96 per cent have had the first shot.

Clea Skopeliti has more details:

A survey has found one in three Danes would refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccine if it was from the AstraZeneca batch.

In total, 1,053 people were asked, with results showing 33 per cent of Danes would decline to get a shot of AstraZeneca’s vaccine if it were offered to them.

Eleanor Sly has more details: