UK to end self-isolation, free tests under 'living with Covid' plan

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday laid out the details of his “living with COVID” plan, which involves an end to the legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive coronavirus test from Thursday and a rollback of free mass coronavirus tests from April.

In a House of Commons statement, the UK Prime Minister confirmed that all temporary laws brought in to tackle the pandemic in March 2020 will lapse next month as part of his strategy to shift away from government mandate to personal responsibility.

He declared that the country’s health strategy will now be geared towards vaccines and therapeutics, including accepting the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advice to offer a fourth booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to all those aged over 75 and the most vulnerable groups over the next few months.

“While the pandemic is not over, we have now passed the peak of the Omicron wave with cases falling, hospitalisations now below 10,000 in England and still falling and the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths substantially weakened,” said Johnson.

“Together with the treatments and scientific understanding of the virus we’ve now built up, we now have sufficient levels of community to complete the transition from protecting people with government interventions to relying on vaccines and treatments as our first line of defence,” he said.

“We can now deal with it in a very different way, moving from government restrictions to personal responsibility so we protect ourselves without losing our liberties and maintaining our contingent capabilities so we can respond rapidly to any new variant,” he added.

As part of the plan, until April 1 people will be advised to stay at home if they test positive but after that anyone with COVID-19 symptoms will be encouraged to exercise personal responsibility and consideration, similar to the flu. Contact tracing will come to an end and fully vaccinated close contacts will no longer be asked to test daily for seven days, as per current rules. The legal requirement of self-isolation for close contacts of a COVID positive individual who are not fully vaccinated will also end.

Other measures, including the voluntary use of COVID vaccine certification by venues and the guidance for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to test twice a week will end from April 1.

Johnson reiterated that it is because of high levels of immunity and deaths being below where expected for this time of year that the government can lift restrictions.

He added: “COVID will not suddenly disappear. So those who would wait for a total end to this war before lifting these regulations would be restricting the liberties of the British people for a long time to come.

“We have a population that is protected by the biggest vaccination programme in our history. We have the antivirals, the treatments and the scientific understanding of this virus. And we have the capabilities to respond rapidly to any resurgence or new variant. And it is time that we got our confidence back.” The Opposition Labour Party, however, accused the government of setting out a “half-baked” strategy which fails to ensure “living well with COVID”.

“The Prime Minister promised to present a plan for living with COVID, but all we’ve got today is more chaos and disarray, not enough to prepare us for the new variants which may develop, an approach that seems to think that living with COVID means simply ignoring it,” said Labour Leader Keir Starmer.

He also referenced a reported rift within Cabinet earlier on Monday, during which UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid clashed over recuperating the costs related to COVID testing.

Under current norms, fully vaccinated individuals who test positive must isolate for up to 10 days with an option of ending isolation after five days if they register two consecutive negative lateral flow tests on days five and six.

According to official data being collated since the UK’s COVID vaccine rollout began in December 2020, around 91 per cent of people in the UK aged 12 and over have had a first dose of a vaccine, 85 per cent a second dose, and 66 per cent a booster or a third dose.