The UK must now ‘start living with Covid’, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday, 21 February, when he announced in the British parliament that he would lift all coronavirus restrictions.
Johnson outlined England’s roadmap to end all restrictions starting later this week, with the legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive for Covid-19 ending on 24 February.
Vaccinated contacts of those who tested positive will no longer be required to get tested and self-isolate for seven days, and unvaccinated contacts are not legally required to isolate.
Workers are also not required to tell their employers that they have tested positive and Johnson announced that the government would lift its statutory sick pay for workers who fall ill from Covid or choose to isolate, from Thursday.
This decision has come under fire with one major British trade union, which said: ‘The government is creating needless hardship and taking a sledgehammer to public health … If people can’t afford to stay home when they’re sick, they will take their infections into work.’
From 1 April, the government will no longer provide free rapid tests for the public and people will no longer be required to carry their vaccination status on them.
Johnson’s announcement comes as Queen Elizabeth II has tested positive for Covid-19. He used this as ‘a reminder that this virus has not gone away’, but said it was time to ‘move from government restrictions to personal responsibility’.
Covid-19 restrictions have not been particularly popular among Johnson’s Conservative Party. But the prime minister has come under increasing scrutiny since he attended a social gathering amid Covid restrictions.
Johnson said, however, that the government would continue to monitor for new, possibly dangerous variants.
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