Boris Johnson is due to reveal the roadmap out of lockdown on Monday 22nd February however reports today suggest that England will remain in lockdown until daily Covid cases drop below 1,000, a figure suggested by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt earlier this month.
According to the The Telegraph the governments roadmap out of lockdown will not commit to a clear timetable but will instead consist of a number of reviews that would see shops, pubs and restaurants reopening only when daily case numbers fall to the levels seen last summer.
Speaking to the newspaper, a senior Whitehall source said: “For any significant relaxation of lockdown, household mixing and reopening pubs, case numbers have to be in the hundreds, not thousands,”
“The numbers are coming down quite fast, but the plan is likely to be high level and set out the tests that have to be met for restrictions to be released. There is real reluctance about committing to specific dates without knowing what the case numbers are doing.”
Based on the current trajectory, England could see daily cases numbers fall to less than 1,00 per day by April.
Boris Johnson has also said lockdown easing “will be based firmly on a cautious and prudent approach to coming out of lockdown in such a way as to be irreversible,”
“We want to be going one way from now on based on the incredible vaccination rollout.”
