In England, all Covid restrictions will end on Thursday, and free mass testing will cease on April 1.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson told MPs that the legal duty to isolate those who tested positive would be dropped as part of the “living with Covid” plan. Boris Johnson said free testing would be offered from 1 April to the most vulnerable.
However, the British Medical Association, a doctors’ union, said the plan did not protect those who were most at risk from Covid.
Additionally, opposition parties expressed concerns about the phasing out of free tests in the prime minister’s blueprint out of the pandemic.
On Monday evening, Mr Johnson said at a Downing Street news conference that “today is still not the day to declare victory over Covid”. According to him, the two years preceding the pandemic were “two of our darkest, grimmest periods in peacetime”. Nevertheless, he said the nation had passed Omicron’s peak, as hospital admissions and cases were falling.
And he said the country could now complete the “transition back towards normality” while retaining contingencies to respond to a Covid resurgence or a new variant.
Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, said the end of virus restrictions was a “gradual, steady change over time.” “Everything does not suddenly stop,” he added. According to him, the number of people infected with Omicron was still “very high”.
According to Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, the virus will continue to evolve over the next few years and future variants will likely be less severe than Omicron. Keeping a virus surveillance system in place and the ability to “ramp up” protective measures quickly was essential to the nation, he argued.
