PM: THE END IS NOW IN SIGHT

ZERO deaths in England ++ 1m rule set to be axed ++ Care home curbs eased ++ No masks in schools ++ And upbeat Boris says ‘normal’ summer is on horizon

Lockdown rules could end within weeks after new covid deaths in England fell to zero.

Boris Johnson yesterday said the pandemic was shrinking so fast we ‘may be able to dispense’ with measures such as the onemetre rule, which has crippled hospitality firms and forced millions to work from home.

The Cabinet will make a final decision by the end of this month, with changes coming into force on June 21. The Prime Minister insisted Britain was ‘on track’ to scrap all major social distancing orders by that date but rejected calls to move even faster.

The latest round of unlocking will go ahead next week, with indoor socialising, holidays and family hugs allowed from Monday.

Restrictions on care home visits and rules on masks in schools will

also be eased. The Prime Minister suggested plans for the domestic use of Covid passports would be scaled back – or even dropped altogether.

‘I’m optimistic things will get back much closer to normality,’ he told a Downing Street press conference. ‘But clearly people are going to continue to want to exercise their own judgment, their own discretion, for a long while to come.’

Asked if this would be the last lockdown, chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance told the briefing: ‘Things, if they carry on without variants, are definitely pointing in the right direction.’

Covid-related deaths in England have fallen to zero for the first time since March last year. No deaths were reported yesterday in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and just four were seen in Wales.

From Monday, indoor gatherings in groups of six or two households will be allowed. Outdoors, groups of up to 30 people are permitted.

Cinemas, museums and soft play centres are among the venues that will be allowed to reopen for the first time in months. Hotels and B&Bs can also reopen to take advantage of the end of the ban on overnight stays.

Theatres and stadiums can also restart, albeit with limits on numbers. And the ban on foreign holidays will be lifted, although ministers are only recommending visits to a tiny number of ‘green list’ destinations. The changes are expected to see millions of employees come off furlough and back to the workplace.

Following a campaign by the Daily Mail, the cap on the number of mourners at funerals will be lifted.

And the rules requiring secondary school children to wear masks in classrooms and corridors will be scrapped, despite opposition from teaching unions. The relaxation came as:

New data revealed that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine can cut death rates by 97 per cent, with just one shot of AstraZeneca slashing them by 80 per cent;

The UK’s official Covid alert level was lowered from 4 to 3 in a sign that ‘everything is heading in the right direction’;

The PM said care home residents would be allowed up to five named visitors from next week – up from just two at present;

University students were told they can return to campuses for in-person lectures next week;

New modelling by the Sage advisory group found that any third wave of the virus is likely to be smaller than feared;

Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty sounded a warning about new cases of an Indian variant which he said had ‘gone up very sharply’ in parts of the UK.

Mr Johnson confirmed that families will be allowed to hug loved ones from Monday for the first time since the original lockdown last March.

But he urged against ‘throwing caution to the wind’, and said social distancing measures should continue to be observed in public venues.

He said individuals would have to make a ‘personal judgment’ on what was wise – with the risk of transmission greater indoors.

He ducked questions about when the advice to work from home would be lifted, but predicted that normal city life would eventually return: ‘I’m pretty certain that eventually our town centres and our city centres are going to be full of bustle, full of people wanting to interact again in the way that they always have done.’

Business leaders and Tory MPs warned it was essential for the economy that remaining social distancing measures were lifted next month.

Kate Nicholls ,of the industry body UK Hospitality, said the restrictions meant that even the resumption of indoor socialising next week would be ‘a psychological reopening, not an economic one’ for most pubs.

Mark Harper, chairman of the 70-strong Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘Getting rid of social distancing is crucial to the very survival of many sectors of our economy such as hospitality, that simply cannot make any money and pay wages with social distancing in place, as well as to normal life.’ John Foster, of the CBI business group, said greater certainty on issues including the onemetre rule and Covid passports was critical for ‘injecting further momentum into the recovery’.