Will June 21 freedom day be watered down?

New fears as daily cases top 4,000 – and R rate is over 1

FEARS that ministers could water down June 21 ‘freedom day’ escalated last night as daily cases rose above 4,000 for the first time in almost two months.

Amid concerns over the spread of the Indian variant, the R rate also went above 1 for the first time since mid- January.

Government advisers believe the reproduction value is now between 1 and 1.1 – suggesting the epidemic is growing again – up from 0.9 and 1 the previous week.

Although Government officials always expected the case numbers to rise again as the country came out of lockdown, figures yesterday showed there were 4,182 new cases – with average daily numbers up by 24 per cent on the previous week.

And ten new deaths within 28 days of a positive test were reported yesterday.

Scientists and Cabinet ministers remained divided over whether the total lifting of restrictions scheduled for just

‘A good argument for caution’

over three weeks’ time should be delayed or even diluted.

Professor Robert Dingwall, a professor in the school of social sciences from Nottingham Trent University and a member of the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said he found it ‘hard to see any reason’ why the June 21 lifting of restrictions should not go ahead.

Pointing out that the patients currently in hospital with Covid were younger and less sick, he added: ‘The anecdotes that the clinicians are coming up with is to say these are not really, really sick people like they were seeing in January, so more people who just need a little bit of extra help with breathing, they come in, they get oxygen and dexamethasone for maybe three or four days, and then they go home again.’

But Professor Andrew Hayward, an infectious diseases specialist from University College London and also a member of Nervtag, said the measures should be delayed until more people were vaccinated. He told the BBC that cases of the Indian variant were doubling every week, adding ‘it only takes five or six doublings for that to get up to say a quarter of a million cases.

‘I think there is a good argument for caution until such time as we’ve got a much higher proportion of the population double vaccinated.’

And a Cambridge scientist who encouraged the Government to impose the first lockdown by arguing against herd immunity raised concerns about June 21.

Professor Sir Tim Gowers told the Guardian ‘things will get bad very, very quickly’ if officials misjudged factors such as the spread of new variants.

Business Secretary Kwasi

Karteng insisted there was ‘nothing in the data’ to suggest the date should be pushed back, but stressed there were no guarantees.

‘Nothing I’ve seen would suggest that we should extend or delay the date of reopening. But the caveat obviously is the data can change,’ he told Radio 4’s Today programme.

A Whitehall source said decisions on whether to keep restrictions such as mandatory table service in pubs and limits on group sizes were still ‘up in the air’.

However, the source said it appeared more likely that masks will no longer have to be worn inside at pubs and restaurants.

Ministers remain hopeful that the vaccination programme will ‘break the link’ between any rise in cases and hospitalisations and deaths.