LONDON – It is confirmed. From next week, England will return to pre-Covid normalcy. At least that is the intention of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Which in these days in the House of Commons will announce its plan “Living with the Coronavirus“. Which, among other things, will contain a very important novelty, a first time in the West: those who are infected with Covid will no longer be forced to self-isolate for several days or to go into quarantine. On the contrary, as is already the case today with viruses such as the flu, it will only be recommended to stay at home.
This is the most important change in the new pandemic reform package, which will in practice remove “all restrictions that limit the freedom of citizens”. In short, this is the definitive “free-all” in England (the other British nations still have an extra rule), although the anti-Covid rules across the Channel have been significantly reduced since last July, when Johnson reopened everything. Apart from a brief parenthesis indoors for the arrival of Omicron, the masks have now practically disappeared in London and England.
“Even with this, Covid will certainly not disappear suddenly”, Boris Johnson will say today, “but we must learn to live with this virus and protect ourselves without limiting our freedoms anymore. We have put in place the best protections against the Coronavirus. in recent years thanks to the vaccination campaign, tests, new drugs that can help heal and the best scientific knowledge on the behavior of this new disease. So “, the prime minister will conclude,” this week we are in a position to launch the new plan of coexistence with Covid “.
As for the anti-Coronavirus tests, their number should have significantly decreased, unless there are new worrying variants: a decision that has already caused many experts to worry, so the test program should continue to monitor closely and extensively. the Coronavirus. The British government has been one of the most virtuous countries on antigen self-tests. Which, if in Italy they cost up to 6 or 7 euros each in pharmacies, in the United Kingdom they were always free during the pandemic and can still be ordered at home and without limits in packs of seven. A possibility that now, however, should soon end, based on the new phase of the fight against the pandemic.
However, it is not clear how the fourth doses of the anti Covid vaccine will behave. For the moment, they are foreseen only for subjects and patients with severe immunodeficiencies and a national vaccination campaign in this sense is not yet planned. Only a few days ago, the British Minister of Health, Sajid Javid, instead announced the possibility of vaccinating children between the ages of 5 and 12 – something so far prohibited across the Channel – but parents will be able to decide to do so only from April.
The Johnson government, in fact, counts on the high – albeit limited in time – rate of immunity in the British population, where according to some studies at least 98% would have some sort of anti Covid antibodies, due to vaccine or natural infection. Certainly, 91.4% of the population over the age of 12 received at least one dose of the vaccine, 84.9% at least two doses and 66% three doses. Yesterday, the cases of Coronavirus in the United Kingdom were 34,733 out of 900,352 swabs (-24.6% compared to the previous week), while the deaths were 128 (-22.5%) and the hospitalizations 1,280 (-13.4%). In short, all the data has been declining for days.
But Johnson’s full return to normality, which according to some of his opponents would also be due to his desire to “thus distract public opinion from the scandal of banned parties in lockdown”, attracts a lot of criticism from various experts as well. David Nabarrothe special envoy of the WHO (World Health Organization) on Covid, told the BBC that that of the British government is a “hasty and very unwise” choice.