london britains new health secretary is set to brief lawmakers on monday on plans for easing covid19 restrictions as the exit of his disgraced predecessor raises questions about prime minister boris johnsons judgment and cronyism at the heart of his conservative government sajid javid was named to the postsaturday after matt hancock stepped down following revelations that he was having an affair with an old friend he had hired as an adviser to the department of health and social care while johnson initially backed hancock the former health secretary was forced to step down amid outrage that he had broken social distancing rules by kissing his adviser javid will appear before lawmakers to update the timetable for easing coronavirus restrictions in england the government has said it will review pandemic data to see if the remaining restrictions on social contact can be lifted before the scheduled date of july 19 government figures on monday showed another big spike in infections with 22868 confirmed cases though thats the highest daily figure since late january the number was likely inflated by the fact that the previous days figure of 14876 was artificially low because of incomplete data for england the uk is experiencing a third surge in the pandemic as a result of the spread of the more contagious delta variant but there are hopes within the government that it can move ahead with its plan to ease restrictions amid signs that the link between infections and those needing hospitalization and subsequently dying has broken because of the rapid rollout of vaccines a large proportion of the cases being reported are among younger age groups though the number of people in hospitals and dying has been edging up over the past couple of weeks they havent risen at the same rate as infections on monday another three virusrelated deaths were reported taking the uks total to 128103 throughout the pandemic death figures on monday have traditionally been lower because of weekend reporting lags still many virus experts and national health service officials are urging the government not to speed up the timetable saying they need time to vaccinate as many people as possible amid the rapid spread of the highly infectious delta variant first discovered in india its so important that we get the vaccination rates as high as we can before theres any consideration of easing the current restrictions which are not really holding the outbreak peter openshaw a professor of experimental medicine at imperial college london told sky news the speed of the uks vaccination rollout has been widely praised as of monday around twothirds of the british population had received one dose of vaccine while nearly 50 has had two johnson disappointed some members of his conservative party earlier this month when he extended the covid19 restrictions until july 19 saying it was sensible to provide more time for people to be vaccinated the hancock scandal fueled anger over the continued restrictions after the sun published photos of the