The date of July 19 applies to England only. In other parts of the UK, such as Wales and Scotland, they follow their own roadmap.
But while the British government has been proclaiming the ‘learn to live with covid’ message for days, the debate rages on. Is easing such a good idea now that the delta variant is on the rise?
Medical experts and opposition members ask for more clarity about what exactly ‘living with the virus’ means: what corona death rate and how many cases of long covid are now acceptable to the British government?
Increasing infections vs low hospital admissions
The number of infections with the new delta variant is increasing rapidly in the United Kingdom. Where the daily average in the week of June 1 was still around 4,000 infections, this is now, a month later, about six times higher: around 24,000 per day.
Due to the effectiveness of vaccines, hospital admissions appear to remain low for the time being. Medical experts also confirm that the link between the number of infections and the number of admissions has weakened considerably.
Nowhere in Europe has so much been vaccinated as in the United Kingdom. About two-thirds of the adult population (63 percent) have had a second dose, and 86 percent have received a first injection, the latest figures show.
It is precisely because of this vaccination success that we can now give people back their freedoms, Johnson believes. Although the prime minister emphasizes that the pandemic is not over and that the risks of covid-19 must continue to be carefully assessed.
‘Own responsibility’
In this new phase, it will not be the government that dictates what we can and cannot do, but we should ‘use our own common sense’ according to Johnson. So how much distance you keep and how you protect yourself becomes your own responsibility – even if it can lead to conflict with others.
The discussion about this has already started in the media: do you wear a face mask in the crowded London Underground or not? On this point, the views of local mayors, the national railways and the British government already seem to clash. For example, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, calls on the government to wear a mouth mask obliged to keep on public transport.
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