Published: February 20, 2021

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Cited by: Urdu Point, Pakistan Point, WN

MOSCOW, February 20 (Sputnik), Jonathan Rowson – Boris Johnson is poised to set out his plans for exiting England’s COVID-19 lockdown this coming Monday, and experts told Sputnik that the UK prime minister faces a delicate balancing act as economic pressures come up against public health concerns.

England has been under a nationwide lockdown, which allows individuals to leave their homes only for essential purposes or exercise, since January 6, as the government seeks to contain the spread of a new highly infectious COVID-19 variant first identified in southeast England.

The country set its single-day record for new positive tests on January 8, when more than 68,000 new cases were reported. However, the number of new cases reported daily has steadily declined since the reintroduction of lockdown measures, and the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed 12,027 new positive tests on Friday.

The UK’s mass immunization initiative has also gathered pace, and more than 16.8 million people in the country have received their first vaccine dose as of Thursday, according to government data.

Over recent days, a growing number of Conservative lawmakers have called for an end to the lockdown measures. One week ago, Tory member of parliament Steve Baker published a letter on Twitter, which he said was signed by 63 lawmakers, calling for an end to social distancing restrictions by May, once all the nine priority groups named by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation have received at least one dose.

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Speakers

Claire Hastie, a lecturer in public health at the University of Glasgow.

“The economic concerns are understandable, but in the long term, the overall economic cost will be less if governments work towards an elimination strategy … The danger is that, as COVID deaths decrease, there will be huge pressure to lift stay-at-home orders prematurely,” Hastie said.

David Hughes, an emeritus professor of public health at Swansea University.

“Nevertheless, it is a mistake to argue that there is a direct trade-off between public health measures (NPIs – nonpharmaceutical interventions) and damage to the economy. Rather I’d say we can only get the economy moving once we have controlled the pandemic,” Hughes stated.