Lockdown warning: Fears restrictions may stay until spring 2022 if freedom day is delayed

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    Today, the Prime Minister is set to announce whether the so called ‘freedom day’ on June 21 will go ahead. On Saturday, Mr Johnson gave a huge hint that he is planning to delay the final stage of his roadmap out of lockdown.

    The Prime Minister said he wanted to give COVID-19 vaccines “extra legs” in “the race between the vaccines in the lockdowns”.

    Ministers are worried plans to delay would leave a “very short window to open up” and mean restrictions could be in place until next spring.

    One minister told the Telegraph: “I am very worried the people who want to keep us shut down now want us to keep us shut down permanently and are aiming for ‘zero Covid’.

    “Once you start delaying to the spring you’re making this type of control of people’s lives semi-permanent.”

    READ MORE: Lockdown DELAY: Boris Johnson to postpone reopening by FOUR WEEKS

    According to the Telegraph, senior Tories believe there will be further calls in four weeks to keep restrictions in place from some scientists.

    A senior Tory told the paper: “I just don’t buy that in four weeks’ time it will somehow look completely different and the scientists will say, ‘it’s fine, you crack on’.”

    Some experts believe there is a “sweet spot” of lifting restrictions because infections are easier to manage in the summer months.

    Professor Neil Ferguson, who sits on the Government’s Spi-M panel of disease modellers, said: “Some of our modelling suggests that there’s a kind of sweet spot of a moderate delay, basically to get [more] adults vaccinated with two doses.

    “If you go too much into the autumn… then you’re in a period of the year where transmission occurs more readily, and you get a potentially larger second or third wave.”

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    James Ward, a mathematician, also spoke about the “sweet spot” and explained that reopening should be delayed but not for too long.

    He told the Telegraph: “If we’re going to have to manage another wave, the summer is probably the best time to do it. With the schools and universities closed we can spread things out.

    “It won’t necessarily change the number of people who die or the number who end up in hospital very much but it squashes the peak.

    “If you delay reopening further than that – to September, say – you start putting power into an exit wave that occurs in October and November when seasonality may make it worse.

    “The NHS is under more pressure then and there’s potential to get quite a nasty winter wave. If you’re trying to run an NHS or even run an economy, the peak matters.”



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