HERE COMES THE SUN
Britain braced for Freedom Monday ++ Shops set to open till 10pm ++ AND it’s a heatwave
A SPRING heatwave will usher in the first significant return of personal freedoms in three months. Temperatures are tipped to rise as high as (76F) 24C next week as the ‘stay at home’ edict imposed on January 4 is scrapped.
Gatherings of up to six people or two full households will be allowed in parks or in back gardens from Monday.
Golf, tennis and team sports can resume as part of the first stage of Boris Johnson’s roadmap to restore normal life by June 21. Weddings will no longer
be limited to ‘exceptional circumstances’ although the limit is still set at six attendees.
Yesterday the Office for National Statistics said there had been no significant rise in infections following the reopening of schools. The average number of daily Covid deaths has fallen to 68 – compared with 1,284 on January 19.
However, one of the country’s most senior police officers last night warned the easing of lockdown restrictions was not an excuse to return to normal life.
Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council, said complacency risked spreading new Covid variants and could lead to fresh restrictions. In other developments:
■ France accused Britain of ‘blackmailing’ the EU over vaccine deliveries and warned that Brussels could sabotage the NHS rollout;
■ Amid signs of a growing third wave engulfing Europe, scientists warned that Germany could see as many as 100,000 cases a day;
■ And in France deaths climbed by 897 in a single day, with another 40,000 cases;
■ Ministers were finalising plans to test incoming cross-Channel hauliers with lateral flow test kits;
■ Pupils were warned they could lose their grades if they plagiarised or used private tutors to write their GCSE and A- level assessments;
■ Teachers are also looking at replacing quarantine with regular testing to avoid the need for pupils to miss days of lessons;
■ All care homes in England have finally been vaccinated against Covid almost four months after the jab rollout began.
Although the stay at home message is being scrapped, people will be encouraged to remain local. Ministers have not said when their advice to work from home where possible will be lifted.
Foreign travel will be banned by law from Monday and those leaving the country without a reasonable excuse will incur a possible £5,000 fine. Holidays in the UK are still banned.
Families in England will have to wait only another two weeks before the next relaxation of coronavirus rules, with a swathe of freedoms restored on April 12. This includes outdoor opening for pubs and restaurants, travel around the country and the reopening of nonessential shops.
The roadmap will lead to the return of almost all freedoms by June 21, provided cases do not surge. Some Tory MPs want ministers to move faster. Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, said: ‘The question will keep coming up: if we are really following the data, can we have our lives back sooner?’
Latest figures show the number of patients in hospital with Covid19 has fallen below 5,000 for the first time since October 12.
And the infection rate is now 58 per 100,000 – down from a peak of 642 in mid- January.
Yesterday Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said vaccine passports would not be introduced until the whole country has been inoculated. Ministers are looking at the possibility of using the NHS app to allow customers into pubs and restaurants if they have had the jab or a negative test.
Mr Jenrick also said that shops would be able to stay open until 10pm six days a week to turbocharge the high street.
His comments come as it was revealed that more than 100,000 fixed-penalty notices have been issued under Covid laws.
IF the forecasters have got it right, Britain is on the cusp of some wonderful weather.
A mini-heatwave is predicted next week, and as flowers blossom, so optimism sprouts from the once-barren ground of lockdown.
On Monday, slowly and with baby steps, the country will awake from its enforced three-month hibernation.
The grim ‘ stay at home’ diktat, which placed us under house arrest to halt the malign spread of Covid, will be lifted.
The rules dividing us from our loved ones are ditched, although families and friends will be permitted only to meet outdoors, and then with strict limits on numbers.
Those itching for a round of golf can dust off their clubs. And socially- distanced spring weddings are permitted (although couples who live apart can’t kiss at the altar). Onerous as it, this is being trumpeted as the long march to June 21 – when Boris Johnson insists normality will return.
It is imperative that it does. For all our sakes, we must begin defrosting our frozen economy to save jobs, raise revenues to fund public services and begin repaying our gargantuan Covid-shaped debt.
As the Chancellor indicated yesterday, one key to turbocharging growth is for workers to return to the office. If they don’t, the damage to UK Plc could be irreparable.
On the face of it, there is no reason why this shouldn’t happen. Vaccinations are being delivered into arms at breakneck pace – nearly 30million and counting.
Hospitalisations are tumbling towards the bottom of the graph, as are deaths. Despite children returning to school, there has been no infection spike. And even with the splenetic and childish threats emanating from the EU to seize UK-bound vaccines, our supplies should hold up.
Once the elderly and most vulnerable are inoculated, shouldn’t we – as Matt Hancock memorably promised – ‘cry freedom’?
Apparently not. Despite declaring that ‘data, not dates’ would determine how quickly lockdown is eased, the Prime Minister has set himself stubbornly against unlocking more quickly. Indeed, as we have seen throughout this crisis, the goalposts seem constantly to be shifting.
Lockdown’s harms – the mental health epidemic, jobs lost, cancers untreated – must now be close to eclipsing the marginal gains of suppressing the disease.
Yet Mr Johnson has extended the emergency powers – even floating the sinister idea of Covid passports for pubs.
Jabs were meant to be an escape route from this labyrinth of misery. Instead, Britain is being suffocated by more restrictions this summer than last.
Troublingly, the public health panjandrums and academic elite seem to have a vice-like grip on the Government.
Of course, Boris wants to avoid a deadly variant emerging. But by keeping liberties suspended – just in case – he is inflicting grievous damage on our way of life.
During this pandemic there have been far too many tragic casualties. Our freedom should not be another.