UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that all COVID-19 confinement   – include the pauperization to ego - isolate if you test positive for the disease   –   will in all likelihood be lifted a month earlier than the plan date of March 24 .

Johnson , who faces potential challenges to his leadership following claim of12 pattern - breaking partiesor social events during various stages of lockdown , foretell   to MPsthat all other restrictions could come up to an end too .

" Providing the current supporting trends in the data stay on , " Johnson said . " It is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domesticated restrictions , including the legal requirement to self - isolate if you test positivist , a full calendar month early . "

The Prime Minister hadpreviously remarkedthat " there will shortly come a clock time when we can remove the legal requirement to self - isolate altogether   – just as we do n’t place legal obligations on people to isolate if they have flu , " hetold the House of Commons . He went on to say " as COVID becomesendemicwe will need to replace legal requirements with advice and guidance urging masses with the virus to be careful and considerate of others . "

The idea that COVID-19 is endemical has been draw as " aspirant thinking " by Lawrence Young from the University of Warwick prior to this decisiveness , as well as the World Health Organization .

“ In term of endemicity , we ’re still a way off , ” Dr Catherine Smallwood , the World Health Organization Europe ’s older exigency military officer told apress briefingon January 11 .

“ Endemicity assumes that , first of all , there ’s stable circulation of the computer virus at predictable level , and potentially eff and predictable waves of epidemic infection , ” she enounce . “ We really need to apply back on behaving as if it ’s indigenous before [ … ] the computer virus itself is behaving as if it ’s indigenous . ”

knock the   decision to desolate closing off demand for positive case last month ,   Mathematical Biologist at the University of BathKit Yatestold IFLScience that the decision " feels like a Great Lakes State - step " .

" Rapid lateral menses tests in combining with self - closing off has been one of the most effective responses to the pandemic in the UK , so to give up it now and earmark higher levels of transmission seems like an own goal , " Yates told IFLScience .

" Many of the public are still susceptible and many are highly vulnerable . Abandoning all effort to insure COVID makes their life less not more free . "

Over the last seven days , there have been579,638 report confident testsfor COVID-19 in the UK . Though there is grounds that the UK is go steady a declination in case , that ’s still 864 cases per 100,000 people . Many are interested that without other mitigations in place , the computer virus could see increment again once these restrictions are removed .

" If we ’re exit remove some palliation then we want to ensure we have other measures in place to tighten the transmission of the computer virus – like improving respiration in shops , work - places and schools   – but there ’s no signboard that the UK government have even thought about doing this comprehensively , " Yates proceed .

" To me , the timing of these announcements , when the Prime Minister is fighting for his political aliveness , smacks of a dire attempt to dress party favour rather than well thought out insurance , driven by echt public health considerations . It ’s everlasting how quickly the UK government are acting to remove restrictions , whilst simultaneously fail to dissemble in time to in effect palliate four successive Wave of COVID , with real human and economical cost . "

A interlingual rendition of this story was first published in January 2022 .