As the UK continues to roll out vaccines for the elderly, plans are being discussed in parliament about what should happen as the focus shifts to younger portions of the population and what a post-lockdown world will look like. Last Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the vaccine programme planned to reach all those aged 50 and over, as well as adults aged 16-65 in an at-risk group, by May, and with that the government has been discussing how to begin bringing the UK out of lockdown.
One idea put forward was for pubs and restaurants to reopen from April, but on the condition that they do not serve alcohol. Another suggestion was to keep pubs shut until May, but allow them to serve takeaway pints from April. Elsewhere, it has been suggested that the UK government could introduce “vaccine passports” to let people who had been fully vaccinated to attend indoor events and travel abroad. However, through it all, no official dates have been confirmed for the easing of lockdown restrictions, despite Boris claiming that lockdown will remain in place until at least March 8.
On Friday, Boris took to Twitter to pledge a “steady programme for beginning to unlock” in just over two weeks’ time while adding that it was “still early days” and reiterated the need to adhere to lockdown rules. “I want to stress that it is still early days,” Johnson said, “and we have rates of infection in this country (that are) still very, very high and (have) more people — almost twice as many people — in our hospitals with Covid now than there were back at the peak in April.”
