FOREIGN secretary Dominic Raab has urged both the Government and the public to not become complacent and "pretend coronavirus has gone away". 

Delivering the Downing Street coronavirus briefing alone, without any science or medical chiefs present, Mr Raab spoke about the importance of remaining alert.

He also highlighted the very real possibility of a second spike in Covid-19 cases, should people not act as carefully as they perhaps were before.  

Mr Raab's warning came on the same day thousands of shoppers flocked to high streets and town centres in order to get their long-awaited fix of retail therapy. 

Chelmsford Weekly News:

Non-essential shops, such as clothing outlets, re-opened for the first time since the lockdown was imposed, resulting in queues of customers.

In some parts of the country, some shoppers were even said to have camped overnight outside the likes of Primark.

"We can't just pretend coronavirus has gone away, and we have eliminated the virus," said Mr Raab. 

"We know from the science, and also what we are seeing from international experience, that there is a risk of a second spike if we are not very careful at this moment of time.

"So, we need to keep up the social distancing and we need to keep building up and reinforcing the test and trace regime and

"We need to continue our steady progress in repressing the virus as we try to get life back to something like normal."

Since the re-opening of the retail sector, there has also been much discussion about whether or not the two-metre social distancing rule should be reduced. 

Speaking again at the Downing Street press conference, Mr Raab insisted any decision would be "underpinned" by science.

"There's no magic to one or other particular measure, there will be different levels of risk whether it's at two metres, one-and-a-half metres or one metre," he said.

"As we bring the incidence and the transmission rate down, depending on the setting, it's something that can be looked at.

"We are still going to make sure that all of the policy judgments that we rightly as politicians take and are accountable for are underpinned by the science."