Five million patients are waiting for routine surgery, 436,000 of them for longer than a year - up from just 1,600 before the pandemic. In the space of 12 months, the NHS in England has run up a "colossal backlog" of non-urgent operations, says the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS). A similar proportion of Scotland's population is on the waiting list, while in Wales and Northern Ireland it's larger. So the RCS is calling for a network of 40 hospital sites to act as specialist hubs for non-urgent operations, such as hip and knee replacements.
RCS president Neil Mortensen says services must not be affected by any further coronavirus surge, or future pandemic. "Surgery must be available on the NHS all year round, not stop and start," he said. Hubs could bring specialist teams together, improving efficiency while reducing the risk of infection from other parts of hospitals, the RCS says. It believes most patients would accept travelling further for operations if it reduced waiting times. The government says it has prioritised urgent treatment through the pandemic and is providing £1bn to tackle backlogs, including £160m to help hospitals find innovative ways to carry out even more operations.

The coronavirus variant identified in India could make up 75% of new UK cases, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Public Health England data shows cases of the variant have risen by 3,535 to 6,959 since last week. "We must remain vigilant," Mr Hancock warned, as positive tests overall rose 20.5% week-on-week. Amid suggestions this could delay the planned 21 June lifting of all restrictions in England, our health correspondent Nick Triggle says the key questions are "how much more infectious [the variant] is, and to what extent vaccination has weakened the link between cases and hospitalisations", given more than half of adults are waiting for a second dose and a quarter have not had their first.

The row over Belarus's detention of a dissident journalist and his girlfriend has taken another twist. Some airlines had stopped flying over the eastern European country after its military jets forced a Ryanair flight carrying Roman Protasevich to neighbouring Lithuania to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, ahead of his arrest. But now Russia has denied entry to two flights - causing their cancellation by Air France and Austrian Airlines - because their flight plans avoided its ally's airspace. The EU and UK have banned Belarusian airlines from flying over their territories, forcing Belarusian carrier Belavia to cancel 12 of its routes until 30 October, according to Reuters news agency.

Two stories dominate the front pages, with one being the suggestion a surge in the Indian coronavirus variant could delay the lifting of remaining lockdown restrictions. "We may need to wait for our freedom," says the Daily Express headline. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, demands: "Don't steal our summer." Other papers focus on what the Daily Telegraph calls "a day of speculation" about the health secretary's future, as Matt Hancock denied a claim he lied about protecting care homes from Covid. The Daily Mirror pictures eight people who died last year in residential homes, under the headline "You told them they were safe".

When the pandemic put his business at risk, a British hotel owner in the Canary Islands accepted Spanish government funding to take in migrants and asylum seekers from Africa. Three months after the paid scheme ended, he continues to house dozens of young migrants because, he says, it changed his life. And if you're in need of a lift, art critic Anna Bailey runs her eye over shows designed to raise the spirits of visitors to some of London's art galleries.

From elsewhere