PM'S PLAN
Boris Johnson faces Tory pressure to lift Covid measures after PM vows to use ‘data not dates’ to get UK out of lockdown
BORIS Johnson is facing Tory pressure to lift restrictions as Covid cases continue to plunge.
Influential MPs and business chiefs have urged the PM to ease lockdown as he vowed to use "data not dates" to decide when it ends.
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The PM will use the numbers to shape his official plan to ease lockdown, to be published on Monday.
It comes amid signs the vaccine may be helping to slash cases and deaths across the country.
Yesterday, Mark Woolhouse, an Edinburgh University expert in infectious disease and a member of a member of the SPI-M scientific advisory group, told MPs: "If you're driven by the data and not by dates, right now, you should be looking at earlier unlocking."
TORY PRESSURE
Following his remarks to the Science and Technology Committee, Steve Baker, from the 70-strong Covid Recovery Group, pleaded with the PM to "open earlier".
Mr Baker, Conservative MP for Wycombe, told "Boris Johnson today rightly confirmed he will focus on 'data, not dates' for easing restrictions as our recent letter suggested.
"As Professor Woolhouse, a senior government scientific adviser, says, the data are looking so good that Britain may open earlier."
Sir Graham Brady, who chairs the influential 1922 committee of Tory MPs, said: "The presumption should be that people are given back control over their own lives and we move from a world of arbitrary regulation to one where we are able to take responsibility for ourselves and each other."
William Lees-Jones, owner of pub group JW Lees, said: "Ministers just don't understand that this is an industry that is on its knees.
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"Even after the end of March there will be a huge number of businesses that fail.
"We've invested in the pubs to keep them safe, the vaccine will make a massive difference, and if pubs are not open then people will meet up illegally."
Specific details of the lockdown roadmap have not yet been decided by ministers who will meet before February 22 when the roadmap is revealed.
Industry insiders are hopeful the hospitality sector will make a quick recovery though and be back to normal by July - just five months away.
The data are looking so good that Britain may open earlier
Steve Bakerf
Mr Johnson yesterday vowed to be driven by data not dates in his “cautious and prudent” lifting of Covid restrictions, starting on March 8 with reopening schools.
The PM is due to receive the up-to-date analysis by tomorrow morning at the latest.
It will show for the first time how effective the Oxford jab has been.
Speaking yesterday on a visit to South Wales, he said his pan would be "based firmly on a cautious and prudent approach to coming out of lockdown in such a way as to be irreversible".
He added: "There is obviously an extra risk of transmission from hospitality."
CASES FALLING
Meanwhile, the deputy chief scientific adviser Professor Dame Angela McClean yesterday called for the government to "define" an acceptable level of Covid deaths.
Daily infections have dropped by 24 per cent week-on-week with 12,718 new cases reported on Wednesday.
Case numbers reported each day were topping 60,000 at the start of January.
Britain's daily case rate is due to fall below 1,000 a day by the start of April if the downward trajectory continues at the current pace.
Case numbers are currently halving every two weeks.
Meanwhile, Britain's biggest virus infection study found infection rates have plunged by more than two thirds since the start of January.
The REACT study led by Imperial College London found only one in 196 people in England had Covid during the first half of February compared to one in 64 previously in January.
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The survey also found the R rate is down to 0.7, even as low as 0.6 in London.
Professor Paul Elliot, director of the React study and chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Imperial College London, said: “We can see this quite rapid decline from January to this month… but, the actual prevalence is still very high.
“We are only back where we were in September and clearly we want to be back where we were in August.
“No one wants to be in lockdown, we all want to be in a situation where we can go more about our daily business.
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“We are only back where we were in September and clearly we want to be back where we were in August.
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“No one wants to be in lockdown, we all want to be in a situation where we can go more about our daily business.
“On the other hand we want to get the level down to a level where pressure is taken off the hospitals."
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