Boris Johnson rules out bringing forward reopening timetable
Boris Johnson has stressed the need for caution and has ruled out bringing the unlocking timetable forward despite the better-than-expected vaccine rollout.
In a Downing Street conference the Prime Minister stressed the need for a “cautious and irreversible approach”.
“People would rather trade some urgency and haste in favour of certainty and security about the roadmap dates we’ve set out,” he said.
On the first day children returned to school Johnson said the risk of rise in infections is “inevitable.”
“There is a big budget of risk involved in opening schools today in the way that we are – that’s just inevitable,” Johnson said, warning we must be “very, very careful” in the next steps of easing restrictions.
He added that immunity has “bedded in” for millions of people who have received their vaccine which means it is safe to continue with reopening plans.
The key factor will be the impact it has on hospitalisations up and down the country which deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said would be “considerably less”.
In the past 24 hours 688 patients have been admitted to hospital, bringing the total to 10,898 with 1,542 patients on ventilators.
It comes as figures show more than 22m people have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, while deaths have fallen to their lowest level since October.