Ministers Are Holding Their Nerve That Their Summer Covid Gamble Will Defeat The Third Wave

MPs have set off for summer not knowing what they will return to in September, the government having taken a foot off the brakes by removing all Covid legal restrictions this week as infections continue to rise. Ministers in England put all their faith in modelling that shows this new wave will peak in August, and begin to come back down as more and more people become double jabbed, and crucially before Covid hospitalisations overwhelm the NHS. They are looking to Scotland, which caught the third wave ahead of the rest of the United Kingdom, and hoping the same dramatic fall in cases it is experiencing now following a sharp increase at the start of the month is mimicked south of the border.