Sajid Javid is due to update MPs on Monday afternoon on when England’s lockdown is likely to end.
When Boris Johnson delayed the lifting of restrictions beyond June 21, he said July 19 was the new target.
But the prime minister also said there would be a checkpoint on June 28 – today – to decide whether rules could be removed on July 5.
Johnson recently said July 19 remains the “terminus point” for the current rules and Javid, the new health secretary, is not expected to announce an earlier easing.
Javid was handed the crucial cabinet post on Saturday when Matt Hancock resigned after being found to have broken his own Covid rules.
The former chancellor, who returned to cabinet from the backbenches, said on Sunday he wanted to see restrictions lifted as “quickly as possible”.
Key to the government’s decision on when to unlock is whether the link between people being infected with Covid and being hospitalised has been sufficiently severed by the vaccination programme.
On Sunday, NHS England said half of all adults under 30 in England had received a vaccine, with more than 4.2 million people aged 18 to 29 jabbed in three weeks.
Professor Sir Peter Horby, chairman of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), has said he would not bring the restrictions easing date forward to July 5.
“I don’t think we should rush into anything, we really want to make sure that we can release all restrictions and not have to backtrack at all,” the leading government adviser told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“At the moment, the data is encouraging that we can do that. But we have to make sure that we follow the data.”
Horby warned that vaccinations have “weakened” the link between infections and hospital admissions, but this was not “completely broken”, with “breakthrough infections” still expected.
“As we see increasing infections, we will see increasing hospitalisations,” he said. “But at this stage, we’re able to make sure that the health system isn’t overwhelmed and vaccination is really key to that.”
