All COVID-19 laws in England including the legal requirement for people who test positive to isolate have expired, nearly two years after the first restrictions were imposed.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his plan for “living with COVID” on Feb. 21.
Routine contact tracing also ended on the same day, as did the £500 ($671) self-isolation payments and the legal obligation for individuals to tell their employers about their requirement to isolate.
Changes to statutory sick pay and employment support allowance designed to help people through the pandemic will end on March 24.
The use of voluntary COVID-19 status certification will no longer be recommended starting on April 1, though the National Health Service’s COVID-19 app will continue to allow people to indicate their vaccination status for international travel.
People aged 75 and older, the immunosuppressed, and those living in care homes will be offered another COVID-19 booster vaccine dose this spring under the plans.
Free universal testing will be scaled back from April 1 and will instead be focused on the most vulnerable, though asymptomatic testing will continue for social care staff.
Addressing a Downing Street press conference on Feb. 21, the prime minister said the government has “a very clear view” of the current situation and acknowledged that the pandemic “has not gone away.”
He said the government is able to make these changes now “because of the vaccines and the high level of immunity,” as well as the less virulent nature of the Omicron variant.
Johnson said there could be “another variant that will cause us trouble,” but said he believes “thanks to a lot of the stuff that we’ve done, particularly investment in vaccines and vaccine technology and therapeutics, we’ll be in a far better position to tackle that new variant when it comes.”
In Northern Ireland, legal restrictions have already been replaced with guidance.
CCP virus curbs have also been loosened in Wales and Scotland, where the restrictions have been significantly more stringent than those in England.
On Feb. 17, the Labour government in Wales scrapped the requirement for COVID-19 vaccine passports as a condition of entry for both indoor and outdoor events.
On Feb. 22, the Scottish National Party administration also scrapped its vaccine passport scheme, and said other legal restrictions including mask mandates are expected to be ended in March.
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