Staying ‘thoughtful’ as legal restrictions end

A Royal Borough councillor has urged people to remain cautious following the announcement of the Government’s Living with COVID strategy.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out plans to scrap all remaining COVID legal restrictions in England, including the end of the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test from yesterday (Thursday).

From April 1, lateral flow tests will no longer be provided for free by the Government for most people – a move which has been criticised by opposition parties.

Speaking to the Express, Cllr Stuart Carroll, the borough’s cabinet member for health, said what was ‘absolutely right’ about the strategy was the ‘continued emphatic emphasis’ on vaccination.

He said: “It’s really, really important that we continue to utilise the vaccination programme but also the antiviral and therapeutics programme that has now launched.”

Cllr Carroll added that the country is now in a ‘better position’ to live with the virus than it previously was.

“I think it is difficult for a Government to, in perpetuity, continually mandate laws of the land which are quite restrictive and do have a major impact on the economy and wider society,” he added.

However, Cllr Carroll said he would echo the words of chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance to exercise caution, because the virus has not gone away.

He added that just because ‘something isn’t mandatory’ and is not a ‘legal requirement’ does not mean that people should not be practising ‘good public health’, or being risk-averse, careful, thoughtful, and considerate towards other people.

“I think it’s essential that the testing remains for vulnerable cohorts,” he said.

He added that while he recognises that testing has cost the Exchequer a ‘significant amount of money’, if they do start to see an increase in the virus or variants of concern which are more severe or more transmissible and cause problems, the Government does need to be ‘flexible’ to ‘switch on testing again very quickly’.

He added: “We have to be pragmatic here that this virus could come back with a vengeance and if it does, we are going to have to rethink what kinds of measures we need to put in place.”