A 鈥淟IVING with covid鈥� plan for England announced this week by UK prime minister Boris Johnson will see the country rely on guidance rather than legal rules backed with enforcement, almost two years after Johnson first ordered the nation into lockdown as the pandemic surged. It is about 鈥渕oving from government restrictions to personal responsibility鈥�, he told the UK鈥檚 parliament on Monday.
Self-isolation of people who test positive for the coronavirus became guidance rather than a legal requirement on 24 February, and routine contact tracing ceased. Testing will be scaled back, with PCR and lateral flow tests no longer free for all from April.
Whether the government is 鈥渇ollowing the science鈥�, as it claimed in the early stages of the pandemic, is an open question. At a press conference on 21 February, the chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Patrick Vallance, said: 鈥淭here鈥檚 no guarantee the next variant is as reduced severity as omicron. It could be the same, it could be more, could be less.鈥�
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鈥淚t鈥檚 not a science decision: none of the recent SAGE [Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] minutes suggest this is a good time to be doing this,鈥� says Christina Pagel at University College London. 鈥淲e still have some of the highest infection rates we鈥檝e had. I think it is the wrong time and sends the wrong message.鈥�
An end to free testing will impact the UK鈥檚 covid-19 surveillance infrastructure. The UK鈥檚 flagship monitoring scheme, the Office for National Statistics鈥� covid-19 infection survey, will continue, with a breakdown by age and region to help track the disease. However, another random swabbing survey, REACT, run by Imperial College London, is expected to be axed at the end of March, 快猫短视频 understands. Officially, no decision has been taken.
Whether the lifting of legal rules will drive a surge in England鈥檚 covid-19 figures remains to be seen. The rolling seven-day average for daily cases stands at around 37,000 as of 13 February, the most recent figure, with around 1000 people admitted to hospital daily, while deaths have been relatively stable at more than 100 a day for most of February.
One glimpse into the future may come from Denmark, which lifted all legal covid-19 mitigations on 1 February. 鈥淚 think it has proved to be the right decision,鈥� says Troels Lillebaek at Statens Serum Institute, Denmark. Cases have subsequently plateaued and are now falling.
Denmark has been accused by some people of seeing surging death rates after the relaxation, but Lillebaek says this stems from a misunderstanding about how Denmark counts deaths. Currently, about 60 per cent of people dying with covid-19 are dying due to the disease, and 40 per cent due to other causes. With the delta variant, covid-19 was causing around 80 per cent of deaths in people who had the disease.
Despite pressure on the healthcare system, it hasn鈥檛 been overwhelmed, says Lillebaek. Most people are either discharged immediately or the next day after being assessed, he says.
鈥淚t鈥檚 going as good as you could have hoped. We have been through the wave: in Copenhagen and Zealand it has already peaked,鈥� says Lone Simonsen at Roskilde University, Denmark. Extremely high booster vaccination rates in older age groups in Denmark have been key for making the relaxation possible, she says.
Nonetheless, she says that even with the protection offered by vaccinations, many people are still getting mildly sick. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not fun. [But] once you鈥檝e had it, you can enjoy the silver lining of an excellent immunity,鈥� says Simonsen.
