Under 'living with Covid' policy, UK will stop self-isolation and free testing
Key Takeaways:
- On Monday, Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, announced the specifics of his "living with COVID" proposal.
- As part of the strategy, anyone who test positive for COVID-19 will be advised to stay at home until April 1.
- According to Johnson, because immunity is strong and mortality is lower than expected for this time of year, the government can relax restrictions.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled the details of his "living with COVID" plan, which includes ending the legal necessity to self-isolate following a positive coronavirus test on Thursday and reversing the rollback free mass coronavirus screenings beginning in April.
The UK Prime Minister stated in a House of Commons announcement that all temporary legislation enacted to combat the epidemic in March 2020 would expire next month as part of his aim to shift away from government mandate and toward personal responsibility.
He declared that the country's health strategy would now be focused on vaccines and therapeutics, including accepting the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization's (JCVI) recommendation to offer a fourth booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to all those aged 75 and older, as well as the most vulnerable groups, in the coming months.
"While the pandemic is far from finished, we have passed the height of the Omicron wave, with cases declining, hospitalizations falling below 10,000 in England and continuing to decrease, and the relationship between cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities severely attenuated," Johnson said.
"We now have sufficient levels of community to complete the change from safeguarding people with government interventions to depending on vaccinations and treatments as our first line of defense," he added, citing the medicines and scientific knowledge of the virus.
"We can now deal with it in a completely different way," he continued, "moving away from government limits and toward personal responsibility so that we may defend ourselves without sacrificing our rights while preserving our contingent skills to adapt quickly to any new variety."
People who test positive for COVID-19 will be urged to stay at home until April 1 as part of the plan. Still, after that, anybody with COVID-19 symptoms will be asked to exercise personal responsibility and attention, similar to the flu, as part of the plan.
Contact tracing will be phased out, and fully vaccinated close contacts will no longer be required to test daily for seven days, as is the case now. Close contacts of a COVID-positive individual who are not completely vaccinated will no longer be required to self-isolate.
Other measures, such as venues' voluntary use of COVID vaccination certification and workers and kids in most school and childcare settings being required to test twice a week, will be phased out starting April 1.
According to Johnson, the government can ease limitations since immunity is high and mortality is lower than predicted for this time of year.
"COVID is not going away overnight," he stressed. Those who would wait till the war is completely over before releasing these restrictions would be curtailing the British people's liberty for a long period.
"We have a population that is safeguarded by the world's largest immunization program." We have antivirals, therapies, and scientific knowledge about this virus. We also can respond to any revival or new variety quickly.
And it's past time for us to reclaim our self-assurance." The administration, on the other hand, has been accused by the opposition Labour Party of laying out a "half-baked" policy that fails to assure "living well with COVID."
"The Prime Minister pledged to offer a strategy for living with COVID, but all we have today is more disorder and disarray, not enough to prepare us for the new variations that may emerge, and an attitude that appears to believe that living with COVID simply means ignoring it," said Labour Leader Keir Starmer.
He also alluded to a reported rupture inside the Cabinet on Monday, in which UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid argued about recovering COVID testing expenses.
Individuals who have been completely vaccinated and tested positive must be isolated for up to ten days, with the possibility of ceasing isolation after five days if two consecutive negative lateral flow tests are obtained on days five and six.
Since the UK's COVID vaccination deployment began in December 2020, official data shows that 91 percent of persons aged 12 and over have received a first dose of the vaccine, 85 percent a second dose, and 66 percent a booster or third dose.