Boris: Watch this space on distancing

BORIS Johnson and his top scientist last night gave the clearest signal yet that the two-metre rule will soon be ditched.

Asked at the daily Downing Street press conference, the Prime Minister said: ‘Watch this space.’

And Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, said the rule was not ‘absolute’ and there were ways it could be changed.

He said the risk of catching coronavirus could be reduced by Britons sitting side by side rather than face to face at work, or by improving ventilation inside. It suggests that if certain other safety measures are put in place, the rule could be reduced to one or 1.5 metres as in other countries.

Yesterday, former Tory Cabinet minister Lord Forsyth said the failure to relax the social- distancing guidance would lead to huge job losses and would ‘hang like an albatross’ on the Government. At the weekend Downing Street announced the creation of a panel to review the two-metre rule. Economists were invited as well as scientists amid frustration that the Sage committee was not considering the impact of continued lockdown on jobs and businesses.

But speaking in No 10, Sir Patrick suggested that scientists would not oppose a relaxation. ‘Two metres is safer than one metre,’ he said. ‘But it’s not an absolute, it’s a relative, and obviously the closer you get the riskier it is, so it’s a risk assessment... I don’t think two metres is some sort of absolute cut-off that never changes.’ He added that as the incidence rate gets smaller ‘you can start to think about ways in which you can manage the distance in certain circumstances in different ways’. Mr Johnson said: ‘We are keeping it under constant review... Watch this space because we absolutely hear you.’

Downing Street has said the panel would report in time for July 4, the earliest date for the reopening of pubs and restaurants.