After hitting vaccine milestone, UK eyes way out of lockdown

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the path out of lockdown must be sensible to avoid being forced into a reversal of the relaxation of measures.

Johnson’s comments on Monday came after the government reached its target to vaccinate 15 million people by the middle of this month, a milestone which has fuelled calls for the stringent restrictions to be loosened.

Speaking to people waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine shot, Johnson said the key question was working out to what extent a drop in infections was being caused by the vaccination programme.

“That’s the data we’re having to look at and really work out what is going on,” Johnson said.

Asked about lifting lockdown, Johnson said: “The crucial thing is to make sure we just do sensible steps that are in proportion to where we are.”

“What people don’t want to see is you know just being forced into reverse – we don’t want to do you know a reverse ferret – let’s take it at the right pace,” he said.

Johnson is expected to study the latest coronavirus statistics in the coming days before setting out a road map for exiting the lockdown.

That announcement, expected on February 22, will be seven weeks after the latest strict lockdown was rolled out in response to the troubling spread of a highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus, initially detected in the southeastern county of Kent.

The government has said it is aiming to reopen schools on March 8 but has been tight-lipped about other possible relaxations to date.

Johnson said his upcoming plan will include the earliest possible dates for reopening the economy, which suffered its biggest crash in output in more than 300 years in 2020, slumping by nearly 10 percent.

“We’ve got to be very prudent and what we want to see is progress that is cautious, but irreversible,” he said. “If we possibly can, we’ll be setting out dates.

“If because of the rate of infection, we have to push something off a little bit to the right – delay it for a little bit – we won’t hesitate to do that.”

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