Summer of freedom may be great in UK

While Britain’s vaccination program has been going full-tilt, life in the country remains in suspended animation. A new strategy was overdue, but which one?
Many lawmakers in Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party have been demanding that he lift lockdown restrictions and reopen the economy. Infections, hospitalisations and deaths have been on a downward slope, helped by social distancing and perhaps seasonal effects. The argument is that Britain has plenty of headroom to lift restrictions and can’t afford to prolong a lockdown that has produced the deepest recession in three centuries and threatens to leave major economic and social scarring.
On the other end of the spectrum, proponents of a policy of “zero Covid” want Johnson to follow the example of New Zealand and effectively seek to eliminate the virus, just as we have with measles, mumps or tuberculosis. At a minimum that will require sticking with lockdowns longer and tightening border controls.
Johnson announced his long-awaited roadmap out of England’s self-incarceration. It places him
conveniently — but wisely — in the middle of the two extremes. It’s too early to say whether he’s got the epidemiological approach right this time, but he has avoided some of the mistakes that doomed his two past reopening efforts to failure and he’s given Britons something to look
forward to, even if it still seems quite a way off.
The word that best summarises the UK’s 60-page Covid-19 response paper isn’t one usually associated with this prime minister. It is, as Johnson kept repeating, “cautious.” He doesn’t have much margin for error. A government that has presided over one of the world’s highest per capita death rates bears a special responsibility to tread carefully and get it right. Johnson won’t want to waste his “vaccine dividend,” and who can blame him?
While children will return to school on March 8, life for adults will ease more gradually, with up to six people or two households able to meet again — outdoors only — from the end of March. The reopening of retail, hairdressers, gyms and outdoor hospitality is anticipated from April 12. Indoor hospitality and larger gatherings for events will have to wait until at least May 17, with remaining restrictions removed only on June 21.
The phased plan builds in buffers for four or more weeks between each stage so that the government can evaluate the Covid data and adjust timings if needed. Timing will be subject to four key tests that consider the success of the vaccination program, the rate of hospitalisations and deaths, the rate of infections and the existence of new variants.
By the middle of April, if there are no supply problems or other mishaps, Britain should have vaccinated all of its adults over 50. That practically eliminates the mortality risk from Sars-CoV-2.

—Bloomberg