Matt Hancock said that Ministers are open to delaying England’s June 21 Freedom Day if the information on COVID cases turns bad in the next week and that it could be pushed back to a fortnight.
The Health Secretary made positive noises about the link between cases and people going to the hospital being loosened by vaccines as the Indian variant drove infections to more than 6,000 a day on Friday.
He told Sky that vaccines would be rolled out to under the 30s this coming week, saying the jabs were the way they could get out of this and restore freedoms, but he was cautious over when the freedom might come, as he confirmed that the Indian variant was 40 per cent more transmissible than the earlier dominant Kent variant.
And it was reported that plans were being made to push the lifting of coronavirus measures back to July 5, to enable more people to get the second dose of COVID vaccinations, and Matt Hancock said that ministers would be looking at the latest data over the next week before deciding on June 14.
Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme if Freedom Day could be delayed past June 21 if the information on cases and hospitalisations turned bad in the next week, Matt Hancock said that they were open to doing that if that’s what needs to happen.
He said in the roadmap that the 21st of June was the date by which they would not take step 4 before that date and they would look at the data, and that was precisely what they were doing.
Asked if the wearing of face coverings and work from home measures could continue in the long term, the Health Secretary added, that he wouldn’t rule that out, and Matt Hancock told Sky that this week they would be opening up vaccines to the under 30s and so they were getting a step closer to the point where they have been able to offer the vaccine to all adults in the country.
He said that once they’ve got everybody having had their second dose of the course, then there will be this protection that we’re seeing at the moment amongst older people, and then you get that protection amongst the entire adult population, and then that way we can get out of this and restore our freedoms, but the time of precisely when they can take that move is the big mystery.
However, do we believe a single word of what they say, well that’s the big question? And this is no big surprise because the goalposts are constantly evolving, and what they say one week has changed the next.
However, people would like to be able to work eight hours a day without wearing an air restricting Boris bib, but of course, that won’t happen because there are too many muzzle enthusiasts out there, and June 21 was in doubt the day it was set – everything in the plans was in doubt!
And this is like a pantomime playing out for the cheap seats while the real serious business at hand goes on elsewhere, tightening the screws on us, and then tightening again and by the time people become aware it will be too late, and what we now consider to be normal would have been unimaginable 18 months ago, and it’s not ending people because what will they have in store for us in another 18 months?
But our government are beyond ridiculous because on a sunny day people are still going to the park or the beach and no one is afraid, and all have been sitting about maskless whilst “Hey, be scared, be scared” headlines are running amuck.
