British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has denied the government had deviated from scientific advice in deciding to lift all COVID-19 restrictions in England.
But at a Downing Street press conference following the announcement, England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty said people should still isolate if they have the virus.
Whitty said the Omicron wave is “still high” and the “public health advice” remains that “people should still, if they have COVID, try to prevent other people getting it and that means self-isolating.”
The government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said COVID-19 will continue to evolve over the next couple of years and there is no guarantee that future variants would be less severe.
Also talking at the news conference, the prime minister said: “I don’t want you to think that there’s some division between the gung-ho politicians and the cautious, anxious scientists, much as it may suit everybody to say so.”
He said the government has “a very clear view” of the 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.”
Opposition parties have expressed concerns that the decision is not based on scientific advice.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his party does not want to see restrictions in place “for a moment longer than necessary” but said, “we have to take the public with us.”
He told the House of Commons: “All we’ve got today is yet more chaos and disarray. Not enough to prepare us for the new variants which may yet develop. An approach which seems to think that living with COVID means simply ignoring it.”
But the prime minister said there is ample scientific evidence that supports the decision to end COVID-19 restrictions.
“The evidence for what we are doing today is amply there in the scientific evidence, in the figures for the rates of infection that I have outlined today and in all the data that is freely available to members of the House,” he said.
