Scotland has reported no new coronavirus deaths for the first time since lockdown began back in March.
The number remains at 2,415, according to the Scottish government's latest daily figures.
Total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Scotland rose by 18 to 15,621, with 646 patients currently in hospital with the disease - 16 of whom were in intensive care as of last night.
Since 5 March, 3,801 people who had the disease have also been able to leave Scottish hospitals.
Scotland's health secretary Jeane Freeman urged caution in "reading too much into today's figures" and reminded people that the number of deaths reported at the weekend is often lower.
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"It is still very likely further COVID deaths will be reported in the days ahead," she said.
Image:Northern Ireland also reported no new COVID-19 deaths in the last day
Northern Ireland has also posted no new deaths related to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, keeping its total at 537, and just six new cases.
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The country has 465 people in hospital who are suspected or confirmed to have the disease, with seven in intensive care.
Some 6,987 people have been discharged since the outbreak began, according to Northern Ireland's department of health.
Latest figures for Wales and England have not yet been released.
A scientist who advises the government on coronavirus says he wishes the UK had gone into lockdown sooner as the delay had "cost a lot of lives".
But Prof John Edmunds said data available in March was "really quite poor", making it "very hard" to do so.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock says the government "took the right decisions at the right time".
The comments come as the prime minister is set to announce more easing of lockdown measures for 15 June.
Boris Johnson is expected to tell cabinet about the additional changes on Tuesday.
It has also been revealed the PM plans to give a speech in the summer, setting out his vision for how the UK can recover from the coronavirus crisis.
He is expected to return to his promise to "level up" the country and reach out to new Conservative voters who helped him win power in December's election.
Mr Hancock told the BBC's Andrew Marr that the government would take a "very cautious and safety first" approach to further relaxation of the rules.
Labour's shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, said her party supported easing the lockdown but called for improvements in the government's test and trace system to ensure it was safe and more help for those in isolation.
Mr Hancock also said the government had reached its target this weekend of delivering tests to all staff and residents of care homes.
But Labour's shadow minister for social care, Liz Kendall, said the original pledge had been for tests to have been carried out, not just delivered to care homes, and accused the government of being "too slow to act".
'Creeping up'
Boris Johnson announced the lockdown on 23 March, with new restrictions added in April.
The lockdown has already begun to be eased, with changes across the UK around the number of people you could meet up with from outside your household coming into force this week, and the reopening of schools for some pupils in England.
Further easing is due from 15 June in England, with non-essential retailers allowed to re-open and places of worship allowed to open for private prayer.
Mistakes were undoubtedly made.
Looking back now, it is clear the virus was much more widespread than was realised in February and March.
It is estimated that by the time lockdown was announced on 23 March, there were 100,000 new cases a day.
At the time, testing and surveillance was picking up only a small fraction of them. When the scale of the outbreak was realised, scientists advising the government pushed for lockdown - and ministers subsequently agreed.
It is easy to criticise both the failures of science and the decisions of ministers in hindsight.
Other countries had already moved to lockdown ahead of the UK, but still we held out for a few weeks.
The key question is, should we have known more at the time and should we have been better prepared?
This is all likely to be pored over in a public inquiry at some point and that will no doubt show mistakes were made - the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, has admitted as much himself.
Downing Street said any alterations to lockdown measures in the coming weeks would depend on the government's five tests continuing to be met, in order to prevent a second spike in the virus and stop the NHS being overwhelmed.
These include ensuring the R number - the number of people an infected person passes the virus onto -stays below one.
Speaking to Andrew Marr, Prof Edmunds warned the R was "creeping up" in some places - with some reports suggesting it had gone above one in north-west England.
But Mr Hancock said the estimated R was "below one in each region", and the government would "take local action in the first instance to crack down on any local outbreak" - including reintroducing lockdown measures.
The Labour mayors for Greater Manchester and Liverpool, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham, said talk of local lockdowns were "not helpful", and accused the government of "unacceptable" behaviour for not including them in the planning.
They said if the government was "determined to proceed" with the measure, "significant support needs to be put in place" for English regions, including a local furlough scheme and funding for councils.
Looking back, Prof Edmunds said it would have been "very hard to pull the trigger" for lockdown earlier, saying the data they had and the "situation awareness" was "really quite poor".
But, he added: "I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier. I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately."
Asked about the comments, Mr Hancock said: "I think we took the right decisions at the right time."
The health secretary said there was a "broad range… of scientific opinion" on the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and Prof Edmunds was one among more than 100 members.
"We were guided by the science - which means guided by the balance of that opinion - as expressed to ministers through the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser," he added.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has said all hospital workers are not yet being regularly tested for Covid-19.
She also told the BBC's Politics Scotland programme testing of care home staff was not happening "fast enough".
Ms Freeman said the testing of hospital staff was part of work to "slowly and safely" reopen parts of the NHS.
She said she could not give a timescale for when all workers would be tested because health boards were working out how to restart more of their services.
Ms Freeman said: "We are looking at the possibility of testing staff perhaps in certain areas of the hospital.
"Cancer UK, for example, has asked for what they describe as the creation of a 'safe space'. That would be for the increase in cancer work that is part of the remobilising of the NHS and we would look at testing there for both staff and possibly patients."
The health secretary said discussions were under way between health boards and clinical teams about testing patients before surgery, alongside all staff involved in a patient's treatment.
Following news that hundreds of patients were found to have Covid-19 after being admitted to hospital for other conditions, Ms Freeman said work was still being done to establish whether the patients were infected in hospital or before they were admitted.
A total of 908 patients were found with the infection and 218 of them died.
Ms Freeman she hoped to have validated information on these cases, which spanned a period from the middle of March to 3 June, by the end of this month.
Asked about the regular testing of all care home workers, Ms Freeman said this was not yet being done consistently or quickly enough across Scotland.
She said health boards had been testing in homes where there were active cases of Covid-19, though she added some boards had gone further and were testing workers in homes with no cases.
"Not all of them have moved as fast enough as I need them to," said Ms Freeman.
From this week, the Scottish government will publish weekly data from every health board of how many care home staff and residents have been tested.
Ms Freeman said: "It is not correct to say (testing) is not happening. It is correct it is not happening consistently in a planned way across the country, which is precisely why I issued that letter of instruction to every health board chief executive and have said that every week I will publish that information."
In a statement Dame Cressida, the UK's most senior officer, thanked officers at the protest for their "extreme patience and professionalism".
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She said: "I am deeply saddened and depressed that a minority of protesters became violent towards officers in central London yesterday evening.
"This led to 14 officers being injured, in addition to 13 hurt in earlier protests this week.
"We have made a number of arrests and justice will follow. I know many who were seeking to make their voices heard will be as appalled as I am by those scenes.
"I would urge protesters to please find another way to make your views heard which does not involve coming out on the streets of London, risking yourself, your families and officers as we continue to face this deadly virus."
The MP further suggested the highly-regarded Chancellor tipped to replace the Prime Minister in Number 10 sooner than expected. Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak are increasingly divided on the subject of China, with the former keen to take a tougher stance with Beijing, and the latter wary of putting up an "economic wall", fearing such a move would slow the UK's coronavirus recovery, the MP claimed.
The Tory MP added: "The sense among my colleagues is that Rishi is allowing more cracks to grow between him and Boris."
Mr Sunak's standing within the party remains, and he is consistently one of the favourites to by Britain's next Prime Minister among bookmakers.
The MP suggested that "Rishi’s time could come sooner than expected."
The divisions were laid bare during a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday at which Mr Johnson outlined plans for a reset of relations with Beijing which would limit the UK's economic dependence on the superpower.
However, Mr Sunak is understood to have raised concerns about the approach, and he and Business Secretary Alok Sharma made "a forthright case" for Chinese investment in industries such as steel and nuclear power.
On the other side, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace backed the idea of taking a much tougher line on China.
Millonaire Mr Sunak, 39, has enjoyed a meteoric rise since he was elected as Tory MP for Richmond in Yorkshire in 2015.
A backer of the Leave campaign a year later, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Local Government by then-Prime Minister Theresa May in January 2018.
He backed Mr Johnson for the Tory leadership and was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in July 2019, during which time he served under then-Chancellor Sajid Javid.
However, in February, following Mr Javid's shock resignation, he replaced him in Number 11.
His first budget took place on March 11, and included an announcement of £30billion additional spending, with £12billion specifically allocated to mitigating the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Days later, he announced an extra £330 billion in emergency support for businesses, plus the furlough scheme for employees to prevent massive job losses.
When Mr Johnson contracted COVID-19 in April, a Number 10 spokesman confirmed Mr Sunak would have been next in line had Mr Raab also become incapacitated.
Bookmaker Coral currently rates Mr Sunak at 5/1 to be the next Prime Minister, ahead of Michael Gove (10/1), Dominic Raad (16/1) and Jeremy Hunt (20/1) - although behind Labour leader Keir Starmer (7/4).
Mr Sunak is clear favourite to the be next Tory leader, with odds of 3/1.
The spokesman said: "There is an established order of precedence.
"The Prime Minister has appointed the Foreign Secretary as his First Secretary of State.
"In line with the order of precedence, the Chancellor would follow from the Foreign Secretary."
Express.co.uk has contacted Number 10 to ask about claims of a split between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak.
