A health psychologist and member of Sage told Sky News this morning there were clear examples of when “the science didn’t suit” the government’s aims at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak.

Susan Michie, professor of health psychology at UCL, said having worked with policymakers and government for decades, she would “never expect” policymakers to follow the science.

“The hope is they will be informed by the science. An example I think where the advice was side-stepped was the moving from a two-metre rule to a one metre-plus rule, and Sage didn’t waver from its advice that two metres was significantly safer, but in that instance, instead of saying well actually ‘we’re not going to follow that advice for these reasons’ … instead the prime minister said he set up a Downing Street review of some scientists and economists and then, on the basis of that, they changed to one metre-plus,” Prof Michie said.

“But we were never told who were the people on that review? What evidence did they look at? How did they come to their conclusions? And so that’s an example where, when the science didn’t suit, the government side-stepped it without any transparency, and I think that’s unfortunate.”

She also said “one of the frustrations about having given scientific advice over this last year” is that there is not any feedback from government on why it gets rejected.

Back to Prof Neil Ferguson now who has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the next stage of England’s roadmap out of lockdown, set for 21 June, hangs “in the balance”.

He said experts were still concerned about issues, including the transmissibility of the Indian variant, leaving “Step 4 [of the roadmap] rather in the balance”.

“The data collected in the next two to three weeks will be critical,” he added. “The key issue as to whether we can go forward is: will the surge caused by the Indian variant – and we do think there will be a surge – be more than has been already planned in to the relaxation measures?” he said this morning.

He continued: “So it was always expected that relaxation would lead to a surge in infections and to some extent a small third wave of transmission … [but] we can’t cope with that being too large. In the next two or three weeks we will be able to come to a firm assessment of whether it’s possible to go forward.”

Matt Hancock was pictured leaving his northwest London home this morning, but refused to answer reporters’ questions about claims made by his former colleague Dominic Cummings yesterday.

The health secretary will appear in the Commons at around 10.30am to take an urgent question from his Labour counterpart Jonathan Ashworth.

Communities secretary Robert Jenrick said the public had only heard “one side of the story” after Dominic Cummings’ revelations about the government’s handling of the pandemic.

While the minister said he would not get into “specific allegations” made by Mr Cummings to MPs yesterday, he did defend his colleague health secretary Matt Hancock.

“I think the Department for Health and the health secretary have worked exceptionally hard over the course of this pandemic. This was an unprecedented situation, it was a national effort involving all parts of Government in all parts of the country.”

Asked whether he thought Matt Hancock had lied on multiple occasions, as Mr Cummings alleged, Mr Jenrick said: “That’s not my experience.”

But he admitted “there were things we, with the benefit of hindsight, could have done better to protect people in care homes“.

Coronavirus vaccinations are now available to everyone over the age of 18 in Northern Ireland, making it the first part of the UK to offer a vaccine to all of its adult population.

The Department of Health said vaccine supplies were limited and there would be about 20,000 slots available weekly.

The limit is to help manage the availability of the Pfizer vaccine after regulators said under 40s should be given an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine, the department said.

However, it said anyone in that age group could still make an informed decision to have AstraZeneca jab.

More than one million people in Northern Ireland have received a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The Australian state of Victoria will enter a one-week “snap” Covid lockdown, forcing its near seven million residents to remain home except for essential business, as authorities struggle to contain an outbreak of the so-called Indian variant.

A cluster of infections in Melbourne detected early this week swelled to 26 on Thursday after the state reported 12 new cases overnight.

Officials have traced the latest cluster, the first in the state in more than three months, back to an overseas traveller infected with the B.1.617.2 mutation, first found in India, although the virus transmission path is still unclear.

From 11:59 pm local time (1.59pm GMT) on Thursday until 3 June, people will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential work, healthcare, grocery shopping, exercise or to take their coronavirus vaccinations.

“We have seen more evidence we’re dealing with a highly infectious strain of the virus, a variant of concern, which is running faster than we have ever recorded,” Victoria’s acting premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne.

Imperial College’s Prof Neil Ferguson, whose modelling helped persuade the government to enforce the first lockdown, has said scientists were “increasingly concerned in the week leading up to 13 March [2020] about the lack of … a resolved plan of what would happen … in terms of implementing social distancing”.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show how influential the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), of which he was part, was in changing the policy from one of herd immunity to one of lockdown, he said: “It’s multiple factors, partly the modelling, which had been around for a couple of weeks but became firmer, particularly as we saw data coming in from the UK, and unfortunately I think one of the biggest lessons to learn in such circumstances is we really need good surveillance within the country at a much earlier point than we actually had it back in March last year.”

He added: “As we saw the data build up, and it was matching the modelling, even worse than the modelling, let’s say it focused minds”.

But when pressed, Prof Ferguson admitted locking down a week earlier would have saved some 20,000 to 30,000 lives “and I think that’s unarguable. I mean the epidemic was doubling every three to four days in weeks 13 to 23 March [2020], and so had we moved the interventions back a week we would have curtailed that and saved many lives”.

It comes after Dominic Cummings’ multiple claims yesterday over the government’s handling of coronavirus, including that the government’s original plan was one of herd immunity – and that Boris Johnson categorically did say he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose a second lockdown.

The prime minister denied this accusation last month when grilled by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during PMQs.

Coronavirus is going to do “weird” things and “super mutant viruses” may emerge, an expert has said.

Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said that while this would not necessarily be a bad thing, the virus would try to become more efficient at transmission as more people are protected.

“It’s hard to say what is going to happen, but the virus is going to find ways of becoming more infectious – you can see that already, when it’s under pressure it will try and be more efficient in transmission so that it can achieve the job with fewer virus particles,” he said.

My colleague Chiara Giordano has the full report:

The Indian state of Odisha plans to screen around 650,000 people for Covid-19 symptoms. They were evacuated to shelters ahead of a powerful cyclone that hit eastern India on Wednesday.

Odisha had suspended its vaccination drive and testing in the districts in the storm’s path.

More than a million people were evacuated in Odisha and the state of West Bengal ahead of Cyclone Yaas’ landfall.