Yahoo Finance Too early to say if England lockdown can be eased next month, says Johnson
It is too early to say whether the coronavirus lockdown in England could start to be lifted from mid-February as was initially hoped, Boris Johnson has said, with Downing Street refusing to rule out it lasting into the summer.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to flood-hit Didsbury in Greater Manchester, the prime minister cited the spread of the newer variant of Covid-19 as a complicating factor.
Related: 4.6m people in UK given Covid vaccine amid pressures for tougher lockdown
Johnson’s comments brought a robust response from some Tory backbenchers, with the Covid Recovery Group (CRG), which represents about 70 MPs concerned about the impact of lockdown, saying the prime minister “must start easing the restrictions” by early March if vaccination targets were achieved.
Announcing the third lockdown in England at the start of the month, Johnson had said the measures would be reviewed during half-term week, in the middle of February. But on Thursday he said: “I think it’s too early to say when we’ll be able to lift some of the restrictions.”
Asked about the mid-February target, he said: “We’ll look then at how we’re doing but I think what we’re seeing in the ONS [Office for National Statistics] data, in the React survey, we’re seeing the contagiousness of the new variant that we saw arrive just before Christmas – there’s no doubt it does spread very fast indeed. It’s not more deadly but it is much more contagious and the numbers are very great.”
Data from the React study carried out by Imperial College London has raised fears that infection rates in England may not yet be falling. Based on swab tests from more than 142,000 people across England between 6 and 15 January, it suggests that while new infections may have fallen recently, they could now be stable or even growing slightly.
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The government’s stated target is to offer vaccinations to all in the top four priority groups – older care home residents, those aged over 80 and frontline NHS staff, over-75s and over-70s – by mid-February.
Mark Harper, the former chief whip who chairs the CRG, said if this deadline was met, and the four groups had developed protection from the virus by 8 March, restrictions must be eased from then.
“Vaccinations will of course bring immunity from Covid, but they must bring immunity from lockdowns and restrictions too,” he said. “Ministers must come forward now with a plan for lifting restrictions. People must see light at the end of the tunnel and feel hope for the future, and businesses need to be able to plan our recovery as more and more of the vaccinations are rolled out to the most vulnerable groups.”
Scientists have said severe coronavirus restrictions will still be needed because research suggests vaccination alone may not be enough to shrink the epidemic.
Prof Mark Woolhouse, the chair of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said vaccination remained a gamechanger in tackling Covid, preventing disease and reducing the burden on the NHS.
“The general consensus is that a gradual releasing of restrictions would be possible but we would have to feel our way there, the way we did after the first lockdown,” Woolhouse said. But he added: “If [Covid vaccines] can’t take us past the [herd immunity] threshold, then we are going to be living with some kind of countermeasures for ever.”
Others said even partial relaxing of restrictions before May could put significant pressure on the NHS. “I would be worried about any early opening of any bars and restaurants, or just reducing the controls,” said Matt Keeling, professor of populations and disease at the University of Warwick. “At the moment we are in an unsustainable position.”
Woolhouse said a key issue was that even in a best-case scenario it was unlikely that vaccine uptake would be above 90%, meaning about 1 million vulnerable people would remain susceptible to Covid after the first phase of the programme. In addition, none of the approved Covid vaccines have a greater than 95% efficacy against Covid symptoms.
A number of research teams across the UK have produced models looking at a range of scenarios relating to the easing of coronavirus restrictions amid the ongoing vaccination programme. The results suggest that even with vaccines, the epidemic could continue to grow in the absence of other measures.
Should the vaccines completely fail to prevent infections and all coronavirus restrictions are removed on 1 April, researchers at the University of Warwick found there could be more than 6,000 deaths and more than 20,000 hospitalisations a day by early summer should no action be taken.
“There is no way there would be 6,000 deaths a day – that is not going to happen,” said Woolhouse. “It shows where the system is pushing us, where the epidemic is pushing. It is pushing towards a high number of deaths so we would have obviously to do something more to bring it down.”
If the vaccine blocks 85% of infections, the model suggests a peak of about 3,000 deaths and 10,000 hospitalisations a day by early summer. “Even after three months of vaccination and 30m doses, completely stopping all controls is disastrous,” said Keeling.
Woolhouse said it was important to realise models were not predicting a guaranteed outcome, but that they shed light on the dynamics of the epidemic.
