It s time to free us from lockdown, Boris – we have suffered enough
As the vaccine rollout continues, the pressure on the NHS is receding, but it’s the British people who are now at risk of being overwhelmed
Boris Johnson visits a vaccination centre in Derby
Credit: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe
Back at the beginning of January, the Prime Minister told us that – alas! – we must enter a third lockdown because the NHS was in danger of being overwhelmed again. Now, despite what you see on the TV news, that danger is receding fast.
There is a slower fall in intensive care than across beds in general, but that’s because very sick people are being treated for longer and not dying, as they may well have done in the spring.
Boris Johnson cannot afford to be overly cautious about lifting lockdown
The PM must weigh up the Covid risk against the devastating costs of delay
5 February 2021 • 12:54pm
In the first volume of his account of the Second World War, The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill noted: “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war. But this is probably true of other departments.”
It may be true of Boris Johnson too. For reports are emerging from Whitehall of the Prime Minister increasingly being the most cautious voice in the room when discussion turns to opening-up our economy and society as the Covid pandemic starts to recede.
CLAIMS the new variant of Covid-19 is more deadly has sparked a row in the scientific community with one expert accusing the Government of waging a propaganda campaign to get the public very scared .