Coronavirus: UK’s Johnson to scrap Covid restrictions as Queen Elizabeth tests positive

“I’ve certainly had a postbag over the past couple of days from people who are clinically extremely vulnerable, asking exactly what that’s going to mean for them,” Nokes said.

The UK has had more than 161,000 Covid deaths, the second-highest fatality count in Europe after Russia, despite one of the world’s most successful vaccine programmes. Mired by a domestic scandal about parties in his Downing Street office and residence during coronavirus lockdowns, alongside a series of self-inflicted missteps, Johnson is keen to present some good news to a public weary of restrictions.

Despite Johnson seeking to shift political attention away from allegations of lockdown rule-breaking by him and his team, the story is still dominating the UK news. In his BBC interview in Sunday, among questions about Ukraine and Covid, Johnson also had to bat off multiple inquiries about whether he would resign if it turned out he has broken the law or misled Parliament, providing one measure of how his administration is still distracted by the issue.

Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association Council, told the BBC on Sunday that the timing of the announcement “seems a bit odd,” adding that it’s a “political announcement almost pretending that Covid no longer exists.”

“Living with Covid doesn’t mean that you airbrush the reality that there are still around a thousand people who are dying every week with Covid,” Nagpaul said.

Johnson is set to announce that people testing positive for Covid-19 will no longer have to self-isolate. The government will also wind down its free testing programme, which is costing £2 billion (US$2.72 billion) a month.

“The pandemic is not over but thanks to the incredible vaccine roll-out we are now one step closer towards a return to normality and finally giving people back their freedoms, while continuing to protect ourselves and others,” Johnson will say on Monday, according to his office.

Queen Elizabeth attended in-person audiences at her Windsor Castle residence last week, her first major public engagement for more than three months, but complained to one attendee of suffering from stiffness and was photographed holding a walking stick.

The queen had been mostly resting since mid-October, after cancelling a run of engagements and spending a night in hospital undergoing tests.

Concerns about the queen contracting Covid heightened this month after Prince Charles, her son and heir, tested positive after having had contact with the monarch. She is fully vaccinated. The revelation also comes weeks after the UK’s longest-serving monarch completed 70 years on the throne on February 6. The country is due to hold nationwide celebrations in June to officially mark her Platinum Jubilee.

Average daily Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations are continuing to fall in the US, an indicator that the Omicron variant’s hold is weakening across the country.

Total confirmed cases reported Saturday barely exceeded 100,000, a sharp downturn from around 800,850 five weeks ago on Jan. 16, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In New York, the number of cases went down by more than 50 per cent over the last two weeks. “I think what’s influencing the decline, of course, is that Omicron is starting to run out of people to infect,” said Dr Thomas Russo, professor and infectious disease chief at the University of Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Covid-19 hospitalisations are down from a national seven-day average of 146,534 on January 20 to 80,185 the week ending in Feb. 13, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Covid data tracker.

Public health experts say they are feeling hopeful that more declines are ahead and that the country is shifting from being in a pandemic to an ‘endemic’ that is more consistent and predictable. However, many expressed concern that vaccine uptick in the US has still been below expectations, concerns that are exacerbated by the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.

Dr William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine said Sunday that the downturn in case numbers and hospitalisations is encouraging. He agreed that it likely has a lot to do with herd immunity.

“There are two sides to Omicron’s coin,” he said. “The bad thing is that it can spread to a lot of people and make them mildly ill. The good thing is it can spread to a lot of people and make them mildly ill, because in doing so, it has created a lot of natural immunity.”

However, Schaffner said it’s much too early to “raise the banner of mission accomplished.” As a public health expert, he said he’ll be more comfortable if the decline sustains itself for another month or two.

“If I have a concern, it’s that taking off the interventions, the restrictions, may be happening with a bit more enthusiasm and speed than makes me comfortable,” he said. “My own little adage is, better to wear the mask for a month too long, than to take the mask off a month too soon and all of a sudden get another surge.”

Israel announced Sunday that it would allow unvaccinated tourists to enter the country beginning next month as the latest wave of the coronavirus recedes.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that foreign tourists, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, would be required to take PCR coronavirus tests before their flights and upon landing. The rules go into effect on March 1. “We are seeing a constant decline in morbidity data, so it is time to gradually open up,” Bennett said.

Israel has largely restricted the entry of foreign tourists for the past two years and virtually closed its skies to foreign visitors late last year with the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant. Recent data has shown a sharp drop in new cases, mirroring patterns in other countries around the world.

Bennett’s office said that restrictions would also be eased on Israelis returning to the country, with travellers no longer required to take a PCR test before their flight. Requirements for weekly testing of schoolchildren will also be halted in the coming weeks.

France will stick to its timetable of lifting restrictions in mid-March despite case numbers falling because there are still too many Covid patients in hospital, Health Minister Olivier Veran says. The country reported 108,671 coronavirus deaths in hospital on Sunday, up by 79.