Michael Gove ‘would bet on’ lockdown restrictions ending on 21 June
Michael Gove has said he would bet on a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions on 21 June in line with the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.
If he were a betting man, he would gamble that restrictions will be eased in just under two weeks’ times, Gove told a meeting of ministers on Monday, the Huffington Post first reported.
Gove’s comments are at odds with other cabinet ministers, who have suggested so-called ‘freedom day’ could be pushed back by a couple of weeks while more data is collected on the variant first found in India – now called the Delta variant.
The UK is in a race between vaccinating as many people as possible, and the new variant, which is thought to be at least 40 per cent more infectious than the one first found in Kent – which itself is more infectious than Covid-19 that came from Wuhan.
Cases of Covid-19 in the UK have started to creep up again, with the latest government data showing 6,048 new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours.
However deaths have remained low, which some politicians have argued is the metric that should be used to make the decision on whether or not to go ahead with the roadmap’s place on 21 June.
More than 40 million people in the UK have received a first jab in the UK, and more than 28 million have received two jabs, giving them maximum protection against the virus.