Working from home and face masks measures may remain after 21 June, Hancock says
Health secretary Matt Hancock has not ruled out retaining guidance on face masks and working from home after 21 June in a bid to allow the majority of coronavirus restrictions to be lifted.
Speaking at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, Hancock cautioned that it was too early to make a definitive call on moving to the final stage of the unlocking process later this month, but the data did not signal that “we are definitively off track”.
Asked specifically about measures such as mask-wearing and working from home, he said further decisions would be made in the coming weeks.
Amid the rise in cases and the surge of the variant first identified in India, ministers may keep some less restrictive measures in place. Hancock said they will “make that decision based on more data in the next week to 10 days, ahead of June 14, as we’ve set out.”
PM’s comments
His comments come after prime minister Boris Johnson insisted there is “nothing in the data at the moment” to prevent ending Covid-19 restrictions, as the proportion of deaths involving the virus fell to the lowest level in eight months.
However, the prime minister also warned there is a need for caution, saying there is “no question” of an increase in infection rates shown in ONS data.
He said, “we always knew that was going to happen”, but added: “What we need to work out is to what extent the vaccination programme has protected enough of us, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, against a new surge. And there, I’m afraid, the data is just still ambiguous.”
Hancock stressed the importance of monitoring the number of people who had received two doses of Covid-19 vaccine ahead of further restrictions easing on June 21.
He said: “We are constantly vigilant as to the impact of that second dose.
“The critical question is, given that the order of vaccination is according to your vulnerability to ending up in hospital and dying, that means the second doses now cover the vast majority of those who are likely to end up dying from Covid-19.
“We can see the number of cases has been rising in the last couple of weeks but we can also see that the vast majority of people who have ended up in hospital are not yet fully vaccinated.
“The critical link is how much that link is broken and that’s how we’ll make the decision ahead of June 21.”
Government figures, based on people who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, showed a further 12 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday, bringing the UK total to 127,794.
Separate figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have now been 153,000 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
It comes after no Covid-19 deaths were reported in the UK on Tuesday, the first time since March 2020.