Coronavirus infection rates have plummet by more than a third on last week – as Boris Johnson prepared Britain to fully exit restriction Covid Freedom Day this week.
Case rates reported by the UK Health Security Agency on Sunday fell by 37 per cent on last week to 25,696 cases – the lowest figure since August last year.
Deaths however increased slightly compared to last Sunday, rising from 52 to 74.
It comes as Boris Johnson urged people to be ‘more confident and get back to work’ as he heralded this coming Thursday as Covid Freedom Day.
The PM will tomorrow unveil his ‘Living with Covid Plan’ tomorrow, insisting vaccines and new treatments can be relied upon to keep the public safe.
All curbs – including legal self-isolation – are set to end in England within days, and Mr Johnson made clear that the taxpayer cannot keep shelling out £2billion a month on mass testing.
In a compromise between the Treasury and Department of Health, he will lay out a timetable for axing free tests – but they are still likely to be available for more vulnerable and older age groups.
‘We will be testing at a much lower level,’ he told the BBC’s Sunday Morning show. ‘We are in a different world. It’s important people should feel confident again… people should be able to go back to work in the normal way.’
He added: ‘We need people to be much more confident and get back to work.’
His declaration however came shortly before Buckingham Palace confirmed that The Queen had tested positive today after developing mild ‘cold-like’ symptoms.
Case rates reported by the UK Health Security Agency on Sunday fell by 37 per cent on last week to 25,696 cases – the lowest figure since August last year
Deaths however increased slightly compared to last Sunday, rising from 52 to 74. It comes as Boris Johnson urged people to be ‘more confident and get back to work’ as he heralded this coming Thursday as Covid Freedom Day
Boris Johnson (pictured speaking to the BBC) is poised to unveil his ‘Living with Covid Plan’, with Thursday earmarked as Freedom Day from virus-related rules
The move to end Covid restrictions and end free lateral flow and PCR Covid tests comes as The Queen (pictured during an engagement at Windsor Castle on February 16) tested positive for coronavirus
The 95-year-old continues to received medical attention but is expected to continue with light duties at Windsor over the coming week.
It is believed a number of people at Windsor Castle, where the monarch resides, has recently tested positive for Covid-19.
Despite dropping the curbs, Mr Johnson has insisted he did not want people to ‘throw caution to the winds’ but he wanted to remove ‘compulsion’ and let individuals take responsibility.
Over-75s and the most vulnerable are expected to be offered a fourth jab within weeks to help heighten their protection.
And Labour has accused the premier of trying to distract from the Partygate scandal, saying he is ‘declaring victory before the war is over’.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting compared axing free tests to ‘being 2-1 up with 10 mins left of play and subbing your best defender’.
The British Medical Association has raised alarm that ending Covid rules is ‘premature’ and ‘not based on current evidence’.
Mr Johnson will risk the wrath of some Tories by refusing to say when red tape will be removed for UK citizens travelling abroad.
Sources say the issue of passenger locator forms, which travellers have to fill in before they return to the UK, will be addressed later in the spring.
He is also not expected to ease concerns that hospitals will still limit visits to patients, with Government sources saying that is a matter for individual hospital trusts.
Ministers have been encouraged by the continuing fall in infections, deaths and hospitalisations.
Covid-19 cases have fallen by a quarter week on week, to 34,377 positive tests in the most recent 24 hours.
The Government’s ‘Living Safely With Covid’ strategy’, due to be unveiled next week, will see free lateral flow swabs dumped from next month, Whitehall sources say (Pictured: Covid testing site in London)
In future, the emphasis would be on people to show ‘personal responsibility’ by staying at home if they have Covid – just as they would if they had flu. (Pictured: Commuters, some wearing masks, arrive at Waterloo train station in London)
Deaths are also down by 23 percent on last week to 128.
When he signposted the announcement on ending restrictions earlier this month, Mr Johnson made it contingent on the outbreak continued to recede.
The Freedom Day plans come despite warnings from Mr Johnson’s scientific advisers that Covid cases could soar if the self-isolation rules are ditched.
The chair of the Council of the BMA, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, told BBC News: ‘I think the right time is when the first leap of faith is supported.
‘You have at the moment more people dying, more people in the hospital, than you had before plan B was introduced.
‘It seems a rather odd decision to make. Secondly, we need to see case rates fall down even more remembering that people aren’t being restricted at the moment in any severe way at all – people are living normally.
‘The second thing is we do need therefore to continue having surveillance because you won’t know whether you’ve reached that point where the infection rates have come down enough until you’ve had that surveillance.’
Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (Spi-M), told Times Radio that at some point the restrictions would have to be eased but that ‘the concern now is that we still have relatively high cases’.
‘The concern, of course, is with removing testing, removing self-isolation, that may cause quite a big change in behaviour.’
Dr Tildesley said one of his biggest concerns was support for people in low-income jobs to isolate and that there was a ‘real concern’ that getting rid of the rules would lead to more infections in workplaces.
‘If we lose free testing then a lot of people won’t test any more and without that data that will put us in a much weaker position,’ he added.
But ministers believe new variants of the virus are likely to follow a similar pattern to Omicron in being more mild than early Covid-19 mutations.
Government sources stressed that although lockdowns were necessary to save lives, the restrictions had also taken ‘a significant toll’.
In future, the emphasis would be on people to show ‘personal responsibility’ by staying at home if they have Covid – just as they would if they had flu.
Mr Johnson yesterday admitted that ‘Covid will not suddenly disappear’, but added: ‘We need to learn to live with this virus and continue to protect ourselves without restricting our freedoms.
‘We’ve built up strong protections against this virus over the past two years through the vaccine rollouts, tests, new treatments, and the best scientific understanding of what this virus can do.
‘Thanks to our successful vaccination programme and the sheer magnitude of people who have come forward to be jabbed, we are now in a position to set out our plan for living with Covid this week.’
He is set to confirm that the legal duty introduced in 2020 requiring self-isolation for people who test positive will expire later this week.
An Office for National Statistics survey found more than 60 per cent of Britons said they were now travelling into work only in the week to February 13. For comparison, those working from home only dropped to about one in six (17 per cent)
Powers to order national lockdowns will also end, with sources saying it would instead be up to local authorities to manage outbreaks.
The PM is also expected to leave open the prospect that further Covid jabs could be given, saying he will be guided by expert vaccines body the JCVI.
Responding to the Prime Minister’s future blueprint for dealing with Covid, Labour said people should not be asked to pay for coronavirus tests.
Armed forces minister James Heappey suggested on Thursday that Mr Johnson was likely to announce an end to free lateral flow tests as he called on the public to ‘worry less about the need to have tested ourselves’.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘Boris Johnson is declaring victory before the war is over, in an attempt to distract from the police knocking at his door.
‘Labour doesn’t want to see restrictions in place any longer than they need to be.
‘The Government should publish the evidence behind this decision, so the public can have faith that it is being made in the national interest.
‘Now is not the time to start charging for tests or weaken sick pay, when people are still being asked to behave responsibly.’
Meanwhile, No 10 sources stressed testing ‘surveillance systems and contingency measures’ would be retained for use if required.
Downing Street said pharmaceutical interventions will ‘continue to be our first line of defence’, with the vaccine programme remaining ‘open to anyone who has not yet come forward’.
With 85 per cent of the UK’s population double-vaccinated, and 38million booster jabs administered, No 10 said it had concluded ‘Government intervention in people’s lives can now finally end’.
But it appeared to keep the door open to state-funded infection sampling remaining in place, following reports that Covid studies could be withdrawn as part of the plan.
Officials said Monday’s ‘living with Covid’ plan will maintain ‘resilience against future variants with ongoing surveillance capabilities’.
It comes after senior statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter argued that the Office for National Statistics’ Covid-19 study should remain in place in some form.
The Cambridge University professor, who is a non-executive director for the ONS and chairman of the advisory board for the Covid Infection Survey, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the results had been vital for monitoring people’s behaviour.
‘It has been absolutely so important as we have gone along,’ he said on Saturday.
‘It has been running since April 2020, and so, as I said, I do have a bias here but it is not just me – I think lots of people are saying how important it is, particularly the statistical community.’
