HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock has said he believes the Government has got the second wave of the UK Covid-19 pandemic back under control.

He told the Downing Street press conference that in the last week cases have dropped by 30 per cent in England.

Mr Hancock said: “This is clearly good news. It shows that the national restrictions have been successful.

“What this means in practice is that through everyone’s actions in respecting the national lockdown, and through everything that people have sacrificed, we’ve reduced pressures on the NHS, we’ve brought down the number of coronavirus cases, we’ve got this virus back under control.”

Mr Hancock said that coronavirus testing for students had not been made mandatory because it “brings in all sorts of other considerations”.

He said the goal was to get this testing made available to as many students as possible.

Mr Hancock said: “Today is the first day that we’re rolling out the widespread testing of people who are about to return from university and we want to make sure that people can come home from university, but do that in the safest possible way.

“There’s a programme right across universities to ensure that as many people as possible can get a test before they travel.

“This is an example of how the expansion in testing capacity that we’ve built up over these past nine months can have a real-world impact.”