HERE'S everything you need to know from the past 24-hous. 

  • Holidaymakers wanting to visit countries on the Government’s amber list have been urged by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to have “more patience”. Popular summer hotspots such as Spain, France, Italy and Greece are among the countries on the list. Mr Shapps appealed for people to have “a little more patience as the world catches up with our vaccine programme”.
  • More than 4,000 people were prosecuted last year for breaking coronavirus laws, according to official figures. Some 3,536 people of the 4,367 prosecuted were convicted, with most offences related to flouting lockdown rules. The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) quarterly statistics report to December set out new offences dealt with by courts in 2020 under fresh laws which enforced restrictions introduced during the pandemic, like Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations and the Coronavirus Act. The majority of these cases resulted in a fine, at an average of £374.
  • The UK could be at the start of a third wave of coronavirus, a professor from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said. Professor Andrew Hayward, an infectious diseases expert at University College London, said he was “very concerned” about the Indian variant due to its ability to spread quickly.
  • The Duke of Cambridge has received his first Covid jab as the vaccine rollout across the country continues. William, 38, was photographed being injected on Tuesday by NHS staff at London’s Science Museum where Health Secretary Matt Hancock was also inoculated.
  • Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said he is still “proud” of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme from last summer but signalled that another similar scheme would not be needed again. Mr Sunak said that the Government “doesn’t have the same concern we had a year ago” about how people would react when restrictions were eased last summer. He told BBC Radio’s Newsbeat that there was “a big concern that people wouldn’t go out and about” and used the scheme to encourage people to support hospitality businesses again. The state-backed programme offered customers a 50% discount, up to £10, on meals and soft drinks on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout August.
  • The world’s first clinical trial on a Covid-19 booster jab has launched in the UK, Matt Hancock has announced. Thousands of volunteers will get a booster jab as part of the trial. Seven existing vaccines are to be tested in the Cov-Boost trial to see which jabs could be used in any forthcoming autumn vaccination programme. Some 2,886 people aged 30 and older are being recruited at 18 NHS sites from London to Glasgow, with the first booster jabs administered in early June.
  • Covid-19 was the ninth leading cause of death in England last month, the lowest ranking since September 2020, new figures show. A total of 941 deaths were due to coronavirus in April, the equivalent of 2.4 per cent of all deaths registered in England, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The leading cause of death was ischaemic heart diseases (4,144 deaths), followed by dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (4,018 deaths). Covid-19 was the leading cause of death in England every month from November 2020 to February 2021. In March it dropped from top spot to third place, before falling to ninth place in last month.