Coronavirus news: Government pauses daily death toll updates, as Sage scientist warns ‘I won’t hug elderly relatives at Christmas’

Boris Johnson‘s hope to deliver normality in time for Christmas is an “enthusiastic approach that is premature” because the community infection rate is too high, a public health professor has said.

Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said social distancing could only be removed if there were no coronavirus cases across the UK.

And England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said social-distancing measures will need to stay in place until a vaccine or highly-effective treatment is discovered.

Meanwhile the Department of Health said it was pausing daily death statistics while it investigated statistical flaws which could have inflated the figure.

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