Health News at Your Fingertips

Prof Sir Chris Whitty says the number of people with Omicron is still very high.

The number of people in hospitals is “still significant” and putting pressure on many hospitals, but rates “have been going down steadily now for some weeks”.

The number of deaths was smaller in the Omicron peak than in previous waves. In fact, the total number of deaths in cent weeks is lower than expected at this time of year, he says.

As he announced in the House of Commons earlier today, Boris Johnson confirms that from Thursday the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive for Covid-19 will end in England.

He says:

Until April we will still advise you to stay at home if you test positive.

But after that, we will encourage people with Covid symptoms to exercise personal responsibility just as we encourage people who may have flu to be considerate towards others.

The pandemic is not over, Boris Johnson continues, and there may be “significant resurgences”.

Our scientists are certain there will be new variants and it is very possible that those will be worse than Omicron.

So we will continue to protect the most vulnerable with targeted vaccinations and treatments.

Today is not the day we can declare victory over Covid after “two of the darkest years in our peacetime history”, he continues.

This virus is not going away, but it is the day when all the efforts of the last two years have finally enabled us to protect ourselves whilst restoring our liberties in full.

Boris Johnson says we have “emerged from the teeth of the pandemic”. Speaking at the Downing Street press briefing, he says:

When the pandemic began, we had little knowledge of this virus and none about the vaccines and the treatments we had today. So there was no option but to use government regulations to protect our NHS and save lives.

But those restrictions on our liberties have brought grace costs to our economy, our society and the changes of our children. From the outset, we were clear that we must chart a course back towards normality as rapidly as possible.

As a result of possibly the greatest nation effort in our peacetime history, that is exactly what we have done.

Boris Johnson will give a Downing Street press conference at 7pm, alongside Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific officer, and Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer.

You can follow here for live updates.

Here’s a look at how MPs have responded to Boris Johnson’s unveiling of the government’s “living with Covid” strategy.

From Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Labour MP for Streatham:

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour MP for Leicester South has also focused on the government’s decision to take statutory sick pay from day one.

From Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda:

Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, writes that Johnson’s decision is “based not on any proper evidence”.

Wera Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP for Bath, accuses the PM of “throwing vulnerable people to the wolves”.

Ian Blackford, SNP Westminister leader, reiterates his claim that Johnson is “desperately trying to save his own skin”.

Prof Stephen Reicher, a member of Sage’s behavioural science subgroup and Independent Sage, says the prime minister’s rhetoric about freedom and choice hides the fact that those freedoms and choices are limited to those who have the means.

He says there are some welcome compromises – keeping free LFTs until 1 April and continuing with the ONS survey, at least in some form.

But he says there are still three “dire problems”:

The first is that lifting self-isolation and ending testing will increase infections (at a time when the ONS survey indicates one in 20 infected in England and even more – one in 13 – infected in Northern Ireland). That is why everyone from the WHO and the NHS Federation to the BMA and Nursing Unions are calling the measure premature.

The second is that it sends a very clear message that the pandemic is over and that infections don’t matter (despite protestations to the contrary) and hence undermines all protective behaviours, including vaccination and boosters (and this at a time when the booster program is stalling and nearly a third of adults still aren’t vaccinated).

Thirdly, it exacerbates inequalities for those who can’t afford to test or to self-isolate.

Indeed all the rhetoric about freedom, and about choice and about allowing people to exercise ‘personal responsibility’ hides the fact that those freedoms and choices are limited to those who have the means.

Actually, Johnson’s removal of support for self-isolation and testing takes choice away from those who cannot afford to stay home or buy testing kits. Johnson exposed the fallacy of his argument in asserting that ‘anyone who wants to can buy a test”.

No they can’t. If you are already having to choose between eating and heating, tests are an impossible luxury.

From our political correspondent, Peter Walker, on how scrapping free testing will impact clinically vulnerable people and poorer people.

Boris Johnson presented the end of all domestic Covid restrictions in England as based on liberty. But that’s not the case for ending free testing – that’s to save money, Walker writes.

And for those who are clinically vulnerable, the end of free tests will further limit their freedom.

Asked by Conservative former minister Sir Edward Leigh if he could rule out any more lockdowns in the coming decade while he remains prime minister, Boris Johnson replies:

What you can certainly rely on is that this government will take the tough decisions to protect the British people and we will have a vaccine and science-led approach to dealing with this pandemic.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has urged the government to keep free Covid testing as he confirmed rules on wearing face coverings on public transport will be lifted.

He said:

Following the government dropping all legal Covid restrictions, and in light of falling infection levels in London, it is expected that wearing a face covering will no longer be a condition of carriage on the TfL network.

However, we know that face coverings remain a simple, effective measure that give Londoners confidence to travel, and following clear advice from public health advisers, TfL will likely continue to recommend their use on the network.

I urge passengers to be considerate of their fellow Londoners and continue to wear a face covering where appropriate unless exempt.

The government is reviewing the overseas Covid travel passenger locator form, Boris Johnson says.

Asked by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw why he is keeping the “bureaucratic and irritating” form while Europeans can travel freely by showing a vaccine certificate, the prime minister replies:

I can tell him we have one of the most open travel systems in the world and the passenger locator form, I understand his grievance against it, we are certainly reviewing it.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says lifting restrictions in England “flies in the face” of advice from many NHS leaders and health experts and will make vulnerable people more fearful.

Telling people should take personal responsibility while taking away the means for people to do so through free tests was “utterly perverse”, she says.

For many clinically extremely vulnerable people, this “freedom day” was instead a “day of profound loss of freedom”, Lucas adds.

The campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice says the lifting of all restrictions is “reckless and dangerous” and that scrapping free testing will cause avoidable deaths.

In a highly-critical response to Boris Johnson’s announcement, Lobby Akinnola, a spokesperson for the group said:

For the over 1,000 families that have lost loved ones to Covid-19 in the last week, the pandemic is anything but over.

People will die directly because of the decision to scrap free testing, and those deaths are avoidable. Just as the government was late starting testing, costing thousands of lives, they are going to be too early finishing it, with the same consequence.

Testing is the most effective way to avoid the need for restrictions, the spokesperson continues, so scrapping free tests will not benefit ordinary people.

The prime minister talks of the country ‘needing to get our confidence back’, but this will only further damage the confidence of the millions who are vulnerable.

The prime minister “knows that it will lead to unnecessary deaths”, they say.

It’s clear from the government’s refusal to start the inquiry that even they don’t really believe that the pandemic is over, yet they are happy to use it as a slogan to justify throwing ordinary families to the wolves.

This is exactly the sort of decision making that we feared when we called Boris Johnson a ‘walking public health hazard’ and tragically our worst fears are coming true.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford accuses Boris Johnson of making decisions that are “bereft of science or consultation” and “purely political and made up on the hoof”.

He claims the changes are “made for England by a failing prime minister” but that the “illogical reality of UK finance” means there will be funding implications for the devolved nations.

He adds:

A prime minister who has no moral authority to lead desperately seeking to appease his backbenchers….

This statement is not about protecting the public, it’s about the prime minister scrambling to save his own skin.”

Boris Johnson says the UK will be able to deploy a “surge” of testing in the future to deal with potentially dangerous variants of Covid.

Responding to Tory former minister Greg Clark’s question about how quickly mass testing could be deployed again, Johnson replies:

That is why we are putting so much emphasis on the ONS with its amazing granular ability to detect what is going on in local areas and as well as other forms of surveillance we want to spot the new variants of concern as soon as we can, then we want to surge our testing capacity in the way that we did before and of course much faster now.

We will have stockpiles, we will keep our labs in readiness and we will be able to surge when necessary but now is not the right time to continue with mass testing.