The Guardian view on lifting lockdown: riskier than it needed to be
For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic gripped Britain, Boris Johnson was able on Tuesday to offer a glimpse of the “Merrie England” kind of prime minister he so longs to be. Announcing a further lifting of the lockdown that he imposed belatedly at the end of March, Mr Johnson told parliament that “our long national hibernation is coming to an end”. One backbencher cried “hallelujah” as it was announced that pubs would reopen on 4 July.
The upbeat tone was understandable. The prospect of a pint in a pub, a meal in a restaurant or an overnight stay with relatives will lift spirits in a way that would have seemed inconceivable three months ago. The nation is desperate to have a haircut and exit a kind of collective purdah that, by and large, has been dutifully observed. It is also true, as the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, observed, that the risks of prolonging stringent restrictions – for the economy, schooling and mental health – were very real.
But while the direction of travel is welcome, the timing is suspect. Mr Johnson is justified in saying that the pandemic now appears to be under control. But as one World Health Organization expert told Radio 4’s Today programme, this is precisely the moment at which the country needs to be “super-careful” in what it does next. Unfortunately, with this slapdash prime minister and government, therein lies the rub. It is hard to avoid a queasy sense that, in a race to head off a terrible recession, lockdown is being exited somewhat on the fly and corners are being cut.
The reduction of the physical distancing rule from 2 metres to 1 metre-plus, albeit with supplementary precautions intended to mitigate the impact, was transparently driven by the desire to help the hospitality industry open up. At Tuesday’s Downing Street press conference, the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, conspicuously failed to offer full-throated support for the move.
There are other grey areas and hopeful assumptions. The new guidelines for pubs, which may involve registering patrons’ details and discouraging prolonged face-to-face contact, seem ambitious to say the least. Self-policing the new physical distancing regime during exuberant summer nights out will also be a mighty challenge.
The danger is that the new normal will start to look too much like the old normal, at a time when Britain’s Covid-19 numbers are lower but still substantial. Another 171 deaths were reported on Tuesday. The daily number of new infections in the United Kingdom
is steadily declining but still averaging over 1,000 – significantly more than France or Italy. A serious resurgence of cases this week in one part of Germany, which has handled this pandemic so much better than Britain, underlines the stakes.
Test and trace, deployed to great effect in Germany, is still not properly in place in England. There are concerns over ongoing delays in processing test results. The NHS contact-tracing app, described as crucial in April by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has been abandoned. Manual contact tracing is still a work in progress. According to the head of the NHS Confederation, current arrangements are “some way short of an effective system”.
The consequence is that the country’s exit from lockdown in July will be a bigger gamble than it may have been at a later stage. In weighing the risks to public health of easing lockdown against the economic risks of not doing so, Mr Johnson has opted to prioritise the economy and hope his bet pays off. The prime minister said that the government’s guiding principle would be to trust people to “use their common sense in the full knowledge of the risks”. As a scramble takes place to bring the test-and-trace insurance strategy up to speed, the country can only hope his faith in the public is borne out.