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Coronavirus: Why are we still in lockdown in the UK?

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Dominic-RaabImage source, PA Media
Image caption,

Dominic Raab is standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he recovers from coronavirus

The government says it doesn't expect to make changes to the lockdown restrictions this week.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab - who's standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he recovers from coronavirus - said the UK's plan "is working" but that more needed to be done.

"Keep this up, we have come too far, lost too many loved ones and sacrificed too much to ease up," he said.

The UK is in its fourth week of lockdown, but other countries around the world are easing the restrictions on people living there.

The city of Wuhan in China, where the coronavirus was first discovered, ended its lockdown last week

In Italy and Spain, the lockdown rules are being very carefully relaxed as new cases of the infection have gone down.

However the shutdown measures in all these places started earlier than the UK's.

Dominic Raab also said a meeting of scientists would take place this week about the UK lockdown restrictions.

"We don't expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point and we won't until we're confident, as confident as we realistically can be, that any such changes can be safely made," he said.

He said easing restrictions too early would "risk a second wave" of infections.