Contrary to experts, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce this Monday (21) the strategy “living with Covid”, which removes the restrictions still in force, to achieve.
Just a day after Queen Elizabeth II received the positive diagnosis for Covid-19, the prime minister is preparing to lift the obligation of self-isolation for infected people and the end of providing free tests to the population.
“Today will mark a moment of pride after one of the most difficult periods in the history of our country, when we started to learn to live with Covid”, he said before his speech in Parliament.
The government said it would maintain some surveillance systems and plans for containment measures in case a new variant emerges.
It is not yet clear, however, whether the relaxation would apply only to England or whether it would be valid for the whole of the United Kingdom, since local administrations have had some autonomy to define their strategies. Welsh Prime Minister Mark Drakeford, for example, has already expressed his opposition to the decision and called any change in testing strategy “premature and irresponsible”.
“Testing has played a central role in breaking transmission chains and as a surveillance tool that helps us detect and respond to variants that arise,” he defended. “It is essential that this continues.”
The lifting of restrictions is in line with how the British government has handled the other protocols, but doctors and scientists have warned that the relaxation will leave the country vulnerable to a new variant and urged Boris not to be “enthusiastic” about the country’s health. . Government advisers also said relaxation could lead to a rapid spread of the disease.
With a total of 18.6 million cases, the UK sees a sharp drop in the moving average after the omicron variant leads to the biggest spike since the start of the pandemic. This Sunday (20), the average for the last seven days was 42,918 infections, well below the 180,000 recorded in early January.
Deaths also had a slight increase, but were far from what was seen in January 2021. The hospitalization curve, despite a greater growth, showed a similar behavior.
The prime minister, for his part, has already said he does not want people to “throw caution out the window”, but the wide vaccination coverage means that the government wants to move from an obligation imposed by the state to encouraging personal responsibility -71.6% are complete schematics.
Scientists say it is still unpredictable how quickly people’s behavior will change, as most people continue to avoid busy areas and wear masks even after those rules are no longer in place.
The divergence over the relaxation was also seen within the government itself, with a conflict between the ministers of Health and Finance, Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak respectively, over the financing of some of the measures, according to local media. A management source told Reuters news agency that a meeting between the top ministers had been postponed, but was expected to take place later on Monday.
The plans have been under discussion for weeks and place the country as the first major European economy to allow infected people to use shops and public transport without restrictions and work in person.
Placing the onus on employers to set isolation rules and require people to pay for tests, however, can hit the poorest people the most, who are often in jobs that involve more interaction with colleagues or clients.
Until now, the government has sought to keep the economy open by combining rapid mass testing with the legal requirement of five days of self-isolation, an approach that has allowed the country to ride out the wave of the omicron variant.
