PEOPLES Prime Minister has signalled that laws requiring people in England with Covid-19 to self-isolate will be lifted within weeks.
The Prime Minister said he will present his plan for “living with Covid” when Parliament returns from a short recess on February 21.
And he indicated that, as long as the data remains positive, the legal duty to self-isolate will be lifted a month earlier than planned.
At Prime Minister’s Questions he said: “It is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with Covid.
“Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions – including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive – a full month early.”
There were 11,471 patients in hospital in England with Covid-19 on February 8, NHS figures show.
This is down 11% on the previous week but still higher than levels before Christmas.
However just 385 patients were in mechanical ventilator beds, the lowest number since last July.
Covid-19 cases in England currently dropping significantly.
Yet Nutty Professor Peter Openshaw, who advises the Government on Covid through the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said he would be “very reluctant” to suggest this was the end of Covid, adding it was “still a very nasty virus”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One: “It would be wholly wrong to say that the pandemic is in any way over.”
“We don’t know what’s around the corner, there could be another variant, perhaps based on Delta or something else with higher pathogenicity, which could come back to bite us anytime, and I’m pretty sure that next winter we’re going to see it back.”
Additional Reporting by PA Media
