(Reuters) – Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock will announce that Public Health England (PHE) will be scrapped and replaced by a new body specifically designed to protect England against a pandemic by early next month, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

Hancock will announce a merger of the pandemic response work of PHE with NHS test and trace into a new body, called the National Institute for Health Protection, the newspaper said. (https://bit.ly/3fZLmE6)

(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)