Still unexplained
The hunt for the origins of Covid-19 has for the past four years been a tangled web of politics, power struggles, and international finger-pointing.
Another 171 coronavirus patients have died in Britain, bringing the total coronavirus-related death toll in the country to 42,927, according to the British Department of Health and Social Care on Tuesday.
The figures include deaths in all settings, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community.
As of Tuesday morning, 306,210 people have tested positive for the disease in Britain, a daily increase of 874, according to the department.
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As of Tuesday morning, there have been 8,309,929 tests of the novel coronavirus in the country, with 237,142 tests on Monday, said the department.
The government changed its advice on face masks to help contain the spread of coronavirus earlier this month, as more people used public transport to go back to work.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was under pressure to resume economic activity so he decided to reopen elementary schools in England and was expected to allow non-essential businesses to resume within 10 days, despite warnings from a number of experts that it was too soon to ease the lockdown.
On Tuesday, Johnson announced that the current 2-metre social distancing rule will be loosened from July 4 to “1 meter plus” in England so as to further ease the coronavirus lockdown.
As many high schools in England also partially re-opened in this month, thousands of students were heading back to classrooms, with smaller class sizes, for the first time in months.
Under the new rule which took effect on Monday, people in England travelling on trains, buses and commuter ferries, as well as the London Underground, must wear face coverings, according to the media reports.
Earlier, the government issued a new rule where people in England travelling on trains, buses and commuter ferries, as well as the London Underground, must wear face coverings.
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