Britain's coronavirus alert level reduced from four to three

Mr Johnson has also hinted strongly that he hopes to relax the two-metre rule in some situations next month so more businesses can open.

Dire economic figures today showed the reopening of UK plc cannot come a moment too soon. In other key developments:

Record borrowing to cope with the crisis, up by an eye-watering £55 billion in May, has sent total debt above the annual level of earnings for the first time since March 1963.

Retail sales recovered 12 per cent in May from the rock-bottom levels of April but were down overall by 13 per cent compared with February, before the lockdown began.

A senior minister admitted that the NHS app may not be ready in time if there is a second spike of Covid-19 in the autumn, fuelling furious criticism of the track-and-trace app’s handling at the end of a difficult political week for the Government in which it was forced into a U-turn on free school meals vouchers.

Data revealed black men are three times more likely than white men to die with coronavirus. The Office for National Statistics also showed that black women were more than twice as likely to die as white women.

The four chief medical officers said today in a joint statement: “There has been a steady decrease in cases we have seen in all four nations, and this continues.”

But they cautioned: “It does not mean that the pandemic is over. The virus is still in general circulation, and localised outbreaks are likely to occur.

“We have made progress against the virus thanks to the efforts of the public and we need the public to continue to follow the guidelines carefully to ensure this progress continues.”

Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed it as a “big moment” for the UK and said it showed that the “Government’s plan is working”.

A government source stressed that the disease is still dangerous, requiring everyone to continue to take precautions including frequent hand-washing and social distancing.

At alert level four, there was a “high or rising level of transmission” of the virus, requiring extreme social distancing measures, including the closure of most stores and a ban on gatherings of more than two people. At level three, the virus is “in general circulation” but transmission rates are low enough to allow social distancing rules to be relaxed further.

In late May, Mr Johnson sparked controversy by appearing to quietly ditch a promise to “simply wait” for the alert level to go down before relaxing the rules. Instead he when he went ahead with long-awaited easements this month, including allowing gatherings of up to six in private gardens and encouraging primary school children back to lessons.

Downing Street said when challenged that the alert was “transitioning from four to three” and that the five tests were met, including getting the R rate of community transmission below one. But Scotland and Wales held off their own easements, fuelling criticism that Westminster had moved too quickly.

Crucially, the new level has been set by Joint Biosecurity Centre which was set up to avoid speculation that the Prime Minister was rushing ahead of his scientists, while Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford said he believed the alert level was now “moving firmly to the amber zone”. Formed on similar lines to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the JBC has an “insight team” of experts whose job it is to identify changes in infection rates using testing plus environmental and workplace data. But final decisions lies with the PM and Cabinet.

In the statement, Professor Whitty, Scotland’s Dr Gregor Smith, Wales’s Dr Chris Jones and Northern Ireland’s Dr Michael McBride wrote: “The CMOs for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have reviewed the evidence and agree with this recommendation to move to Level 3 across the UK.”

Schools minister Nick Gibb was unable to say if the delayed coronavirus smartphone app will be ready for a second spike in the autumn. He said the problems the Government was having with the virus tracing app had been experienced in other countries.

Yesterday the Government performed another major U-turn by abandoning the NHS Covid-19 contact tracing app in favour of technology provided by Apple and Google.