Boris Johnson has been urged by a public health expert to keep restrictions in place “for a few more weeks” to “stop us going backwards” into another lockdown.
Jim McManus, the vice-president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, has said that the current restrictions should be kept going four four more weeks, and that if we “invest that little bit of time to keep us going forwards, it will stop us going backwards”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the “uneven and rapid” spread of the new more-transmissible Delta variant means that the Prime Minister should delay the planned June 21 reopening.
Mr McManus said data, and not dates, should be behind the final decision, adding: “Patience now will pay off in the long run.”
The latest weekly surveillance report from Public Health England, published on Thursday, showed case rates had risen in nearly all age groups in England and more than doubled among 20 to 29-year-olds.
Mr McManus said: “Covid is not going to disappear on the 21st of June and lifting all measures as early as the 21st risks reversing the significant progress we have made.
“The complete lifting of measures on the 21st of June not only risks an increase in cases and hospitalisation, but risks the introduction of new variants to the UK which will undermine our vaccination programme and derail our path back to normality.”
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