Boris Johnson is drawing up plans to ditch all Covid laws from as early as March as the under-fire PM tries to win over his backbenchers, it was claimed today.
A senior source claimed the Government was seriously considering abandoning all legally-binding curbs in England and moving to a guidance-based system as it pivots towards living with the virus like flu.
The official claimed even the most basic rules could go, such as compulsory self-isolation of Covid cases and the requirement to co-operate with Test and Trace.
Emergency Covid laws brought in at the start of the pandemic are due to expire in March if they are not renewed as part of a timetable set out before Omicron hit.
Ministers are already planning to ditch Plan B curbs brought in to fight to new variant last month, with Covid passports and working from home expected to be scrapped later this month.
But Mr Johnson is said to have taken huge confidence from the country’s collapsing case numbers and flatlining hospital rates that the UK can safely live with Covid.
He will finalise the plans over the coming weeks, with an announcement on which measurers will be dropped expected in March, according to the Guardian.
The embattled PM has laid out a number of other Tory-friendly policies to appease backbench MPs as he faces calls to resign over parties in No10 during lockdown.
Boris Johnson (pictured today leaving Downing Street) is drawing up plans to ditch all Covid laws from as early as March as the under-fire PM tries to win over his backbenchers
Professor Mike Tildesley, a University of Warwick academic and leading government adviser, said the latest Covid figures were ‘cautiously good news’
The source told the paper it would be ‘perverse’ for emergency Covid laws to remain in place for longer than two years since the start of the pandemic.
Plans to loosen Plan B curbs are already being finalised, with Sajid Javid saying today he is ‘cautiously optimistic’ an announcement will be made next week.
The Health Secretary told the Commons: ‘Eight weeks ago when this House last met, the world had not even heard of the Omicron variant. Yet since then we have seen a third of the UK’s total number of Covid cases recorded.
‘The action this Government has taken in response to Omicron and the collective efforts of the British people have seen us become the most boosted country in Europe, the most tested country in Europe, and the most antivirals per head in Europe.
‘That is why we are the most open country in Europe.
‘I have always said that these restrictions should not stay in place a day longer than absolutely necessary.
‘Due to these pharmaceutical defences and the likelihood that we have already reached the peak of the case numbers of hospitalisations, I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to substantially reduce restrictions next week.’
Covid passes for large indoor venues and widespread WFH guidance are expected to be ditched but masks in shops and on public transport could stay for a little while longer.
The Government has taken confidence in the collapsing Covid numbers and widening disconnect between cases and serious illness.
Another 84,429 tests came back positive for the virus across the UK in the past 24 hours, according to Government dashboard data, down 41 per cent on last week.
Daily cases have fallen week-on-week for 12 days in a row. There were also 85 coronavirus deaths registered yesterday in a 10 per cent rise compared to last Monday.
Latest hospital data shows there were 2,357 admissions on January 11, virtually unchanged in a week.
Mr Johnson is said to be keen to ditch the measures — which nearly 100 Tories voted against last month — to win back the support of his backbenchers.
He is facing anger within his party over a boozy garden party that happened in the garden of No10 on May 20, 2020, at the height of the first lockdown.
The scandal deepened last night as Mr Johnson’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings said the PM was warned in advance that the party was illegal.
Mr Johnson has launched a string of populist policy announcements this week in an attempt to save his premiership – including tougher rules on Channel crossings and a freeze on the BBC license fee.
While some experts have said that downgrading Covid laws could be dangerous for the NHS, others say it is the logical next step.
The World Health Organization warned leaders against making ‘premature promises’ about when restrictions will end.
Dr David Nabarro, the WHO’s special envoy on Covid, told BBC Breakfast: ‘I’m a public health person… I would not be making promises some time in the future because, once you make a promise, it’s super hard then to change what you’re going to do – you feel you’re kind of doing a U-turn.
‘This virus is constantly evolving and it’s super hard to predict where it will be – we can say where we hope we’re going to go, we can say where we’d like to go, we can say what we think we need to do to get there – but making promises that we’ll do something on a particular date, I think, is unwise.’
Dr Nabarro reiterated his view that the situation in the UK ‘gives us grounds for hope’ but continued to urge caution.
‘The goal that we’re all aiming for is a situation where this virus is present, but life is organised so that it is not disrupted,’ he said.
‘We also need to be humble, this virus is continuing to evolve and we’re never quite sure that we know exactly where it’s going to go next.’
But one of the Government’s scientific advisers said future variants were likely to be as mild or milder than Omicron.
Professor Andrew Hayward, a member of SAGE, told Times Radio: ‘It doesn’t do the virus any good to become increasingly severe.
‘In fact, it looks like the Omicron variant, by becoming more transmissible, that it’s also become less severe, and we would hope that’s the general direction of travel.’
Professor Hayward said he agreed the pandemic was coming to ‘an end’ and people will live with the virus with ‘much less disruption’.
He added: ‘It will tend to, I think, settle into a seasonal pattern – we may still get quite big winters of infection but not the sort of level where we can justify wholesale societal closedown.
‘So, I think it is genuinely an optimistic picture, but we’re still not quite there yet.’
Meanwhile, questions are being raised about whether mass booster jab campaigns should continue as the world learns to live with Covid.
The debate has been reignited after a study in Israel found that even a fourth dose isn’t enough to stop people getting infected with Omicron.
The trial of more than 270 medical staff l found the fourth shot only raised antibodies ‘a little’ compared to those who were triple-vaccinated.
Participants given four doses were only ‘a bit less’ likely to test positive for the mutant strain than those who had received three.
The findings were true for both Pfizer and Moderna.
Dr Gili Regev-Yochav, the lead researcher at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, said the small extra benefit was not enough to justify a rollout to the whole adult population.