BBC News
For more than a year, personal freedoms have been curtailed to keep Covid at bay.
That looks likely to change, with ministers proposing to lift many of the remaining restrictions in England on 19 July. The details, set out on Monday, have sparked intense debate.
But what is unarguable is that the nature of the pandemic in the UK has changed - and with it so should many of our assumptions.
Covid no longer the deadly virus it was
The rollout of the vaccination programme has altered everything, reducing both the individual risk and the wider one to the health system.
First published on Sun 23 May 2021 12.57 EDT
The prospects for ending all coronavirus lockdown restrictions in England on 21 June are âlooking goodâ as long as people are careful, said Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, while other scientists said the latest variant could spread widely even with high vaccination coverage and the public were urged to get second shots.
Harries was speaking as the government revealed that more than a million people had downloaded the NHS app, which now enables people to prove their vaccination status if they want to travel â suggesting many are hoping for a foreign holiday soon. More than 22.6 million people in the UK have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine.