On the 5 of July, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his plan to remove all Covid-19 restrictions by July 19 as a test to see whether the vaccination campaign is effective for protection against the new and highly contagious variant, Delta. The final decision is to be taken next week.
Boris Johnson is betting on the vaccination programme to remove the most onerous constraints on behaviour in Britain’s peacetime history. The constraints: mandatory wearing of masks, social distancing, and work from home, would be removed as he hopes that the vaccines will be able to prevent the health services from being overwhelmed from cases occurring from a new wave of Covid-19.
If the plan is applied, nightclubs will reopen, and the limit of hospital visits will be removed. The social guidelines will be discarded. Johnson told a news conference, “We must be honest with ourselves that if we can’t reopen our society in the next few weeks, when we will be helped by the arrival of summer and by the school holidays, then we must ask ourselves when we will be able to return to normal.”
The set of rules will only apply to England and not Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. Even though England was the seventh highest in terms of global death from Covid, it was quick on the take up of vaccines with 86% of the adults receiving a first dose and 64% receiving both doses as of Monday. According to Public Health England, the vaccines are highly effective in preventing the Delta variant from leading to serious illness, especially after two doses.
Johnson said, “I didn’t want people to feel that this is, as it were, the moment to get demob happy … it is very far from the end of dealing with this virus.” He also added that even though the restrictions will be removed, the public is advised to be careful and if nit the restrictions will have to be put again.
The opposition leader, Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, does not agree with the plan put forward. He said, “Simply throwing off all protections when the infection rate is going up is reckless.” He added that legal measures such as wearing masks on public transport should still be valid.
