Britain must learn to live with COVID-19 as it could be with us forever, Health Minister Sajid Javid said, adding that the UK is ahead of other countries as the government lifts its coronavirus lockdown.

"We need to learn to live with it. Sadly people die of flu as well: in a bad flu year you can sadly lose about 20,000 lives, but we don't shut down our entire country," Javid told Sky News.

"COVID is not going away. It's going to be with us for many, many years, perhaps forever, and we have to learn to live with it... I think we are leading Europe in the transition from pandemic to endemic and we're leading the way in showing the world how you can live with COVID."