PM Boris Johnson confirms Stage 4 lifting of covid restrictions to be delayed by up to four weeks

PM Boris Johnson

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed this evening (June 14) that the final step of lifting restrictions will be delayed by up to four weeks.

The final stage had been scheduled for no earlier than June 21 but a rise in Delta variant cases of covid and resulted in a setting back of that step until July 19.

The final step involves reopening everything including nightclubs and large events; the end of legal limits on social contact “with appropriate mitigations.” Large scale events were also to resume.

Weddings and wakes

However, restrictions on the number of people at weddings and wakes will be lifted on June 21 as long as socially distancing is observed, the PM said. Venues must adhere to covid secure guidance, maintain social distancing and provide table service. All weddings in private settings, such as gardens, must have completed a covid risk assessment to ascertain how many guests they can host safely.

‘Cases growing’

The PM said: “The Delta variant is now spreading faster than the third wave predicted in the February roadmap. We’re seeing cases growing by about 64 per cent per week, and in the worst affected areas, it’s doubling every week. And the average number of people being admitted to hospital in England has increased by 50 per cent week on week, and by 61 per cent in the North West, which may be the shape of things to come.

“Even if the link between hospitalisation and death has also been weakened, I’m afraid numbers in intensive care, in ICU, are also rising. And so we have faced a very difficult choice. We can simply keep going with all of step 4 on June 21 even though there is a real possibility that the virus will outrun the vaccines and that thousands more deaths would ensue that could otherwise have been avoided.

“Or else we can give our NHS a few more crucial weeks to get those remaining jabs into the arms of those who need them. And since today I cannot say that we have met all four tests for proceeding with step four, I do think it is sensible to wait just a little longer.

“By Monday, July 19 we will aim to have double jabbed around two thirds of the adult population including everyone over 50, all the vulnerable, all the frontline health and care workers and everyone over 40 who received their first dose by mid-May.

“And to do this we will now accelerate the second jabs for those over 40 – just as we did for the vulnerable groups – so they get maximum protection as fast as possible.

“And we will bring forward our target to give every adult in this country a first dose by July 19, that is including young people over the age of 18 with 23 and 24 year olds invited to book jabs from tomorrow – so we reduce the risk of transmission among groups that mix the most.”

Pilot events

Pilot events – such as Euro2020 and some theatrical performances- will go ahead from June 21. Attendees will need to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test.

Care home residents will no longer need to isolate if they leave their residence. Exceptions will include high risk visits including overnight stays in hospital.

The situation will be monitored and, said the PM, if after two weeks the risk has diminished, the last step of restriction lifting could happen earlier – possibly on July 5.

‘No more than 4 weeks’

PM Boris Johnson added: “As things stand – and on the basis of the evidence I can see right now – I am confident we will not need any more than 4 weeks and we won’t need to go beyond July 19. It is unmistakably clear the vaccines are working and the sheer scale of the vaccine roll-out has made our position incomparably better than in previous waves.

“But now is the time to ease off the accelerator because by being cautious now we have the chance – in the next four weeks – to save many thousands of lives by vaccinating millions more people. And once the adults of this country have been overwhelmingly vaccinated, which is what we can achieve in a short space of time, we will be in a far stronger position to keep hospitalisations down, to live with this disease, and to complete our cautious but irreversible roadmap to freedom.”

30 Comments

  1. “As things stand – and on the basis of the evidence I can see right now – I am confident we will not need any more than 4 weeks and we won’t need to go beyond July 19” … that’s almost exactly what he said about releasing lockdown on 21st June.
    This fool doesn’t even learn from his own mistakes.

  2. 4 weeks it Is .
    We should all be looking forward to a decent summer .
    As was said this morning on bbc 75 % of cases in hospital are people who have not been vaccinated why not is the question there ?
    I know several people who haven’t been vaccinated as they say I’m scared of needles or there injecting something dangerous but they have tattoos so what’s the difference .

    Make the vaccines compulsory unless advised by doctors for medical reasons .
    If you don’t want to be vaccinated then you lose rights to holidays , pubs , clubs etc then we will see who wants a vaccine or who wants to put others at risk .

    • Whats your view on fat people who disproportionately represented covid admissions , block beds in the nhs for long periods even in normal times, thus increasing waiting times for others?

      • This should be the huge wake-up call for people to control their weight, it has been estimated that half of the UK & US will be overweight or obese by 2050, but more recently that is now a low end estimate.

        The NHS simply cannot continue to function in any serious way with the growing burdens of obesity, damage from smoking, alcohol abuse & drug abuse-it needs a serious wholesale commitment from the government to actually take the food & alcohol companies to task-along with the premises doing drink all you can happy hours & buy 8 for the price of 2 junk food special etc, to finally ban tobacco & the public to change their behaviours. Unfortunately aside from all the health problems it brings it makes your chances of suffering serious side effects from things like Covid far greater.

      • Exactly Chadlyn & that is the problem with trying to create a tier society depending on whether you have had the jabs or not. Of those in hospital now a decent proportion had both jabs & still contracted it. Reality is these jabs are not 100% effective & for propaganda the relative risk reduction rates are being used rather than the absolute rick reduction rates-whichare like night & day.

    • And how do you make it compulsory exactly? Injecting something that can cause lethal side effects & cause autoimmune diseases down the line at the force of gunpoint via the army or armed police? Introducing your apartheid system?

        • They can be if you are one of the minority of people who doesn’t have resistance-for the overwhelming majority they either don’t know they have it, or will have minor issues you get with any virus.

          The average death age from it is in the eighties & the reality is most people who get severe side effects or expire are in bad physical health-especially their weight. Worldwide it is not even at 4 million deaths from a population of nearly 8 billion.

          • In the UK the number of deaths due to 18 months of Covid is more than twice the number of civilian deaths in the whole of WW2.
            The nature of this type if viral infection is that without intervention, cases will rise exponentially, as will hospitalizations and death.
            The only intervention originally available was lockdown. And this has worked. But as soon as lockdown was released, infections rose again.
            We now have vaccines which work to a greater or lesser extent. But until about 80% of the population is vaccinated, we will not have achieved “herd immunity”.
            Until that time, the population as a whole is at risk from more virulent and lethal mutations.
            Caution is the best way forward.

  3. I can’t stand hypocrites, I believe he’s trying to save lives. I am sorry for affected industries, but, I would rather take another Month of restrictions, than another lockdown. (which we are rapidly heading for).

    • Wouldn’t worry about it-https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext

        • Andrew, are you part of the short attention span world nowadays who can’t read and digest a whole article? It all seems pretty clear and telling in many places:)…

  4. Don’t bother to say anything to Craig McKinley about loss of freedom as he won’t bother to reply.
    Why can you have unlimited numbers at weddings and funerals but can’t sing to praise the Lord Jesus? Clear case of relígious hatred.
    Abolish all attacks on individuals freedoms and ignore the “experts” as they have been repeatedly proved to be peddling lies and inaccuracies.

    • Yep decisions based on percentages and not real numbers along with many of those affected being unvaccinated so the likely pool of possible infections is much smaller.

    • Singing to imaginary sky dwellers is not any kind of priority. You can do such nonsense at your home.

    • You can only sing in groups of six or fewer unless you’re in a professional choir. There is no logical reason for this ruling.

      • Would imagine it is because a bunch of people in close proximity emitting spit etc over each other & into the air is not very sensible in the current climate.

        • I think Steve has missed the point. Why are professional choirs allowed to meet to sing, no matter how many members they have? Also, singers don’t usually”spit etc over each other”, especially not when they’re 2 metres away from each other.

        • But tens of thousands if sports fans can meet up to cheer on their teams; wedding venues are able to have as many guests as the building will take.
          Now that makes sense! If the rules said that each singer had to have (say) 2 square metres, then the number of singers would depend on the size of the venue.
          Currently, no matter if you’re in a small church hall or Canterbury Cathedral, 6 singers is the maximum .

  5. So we have to wait another 4 weeks but in the man time, RED LIST countries are being allowed to come through Biggin Hill airport. FACT

  6. Yes they are allowing UK or Irish who reside in the uk to land at biggin hill but on arrival they are transported to government hotel for 10 days at a cost of £1750 a person .
    This is confirmed on there website . However no foreign tourists will be landed or allowed on these flights to biggin

  7. This is most recent from biggin hill site on 8/6/21.

    London – 8th June 2021: London Biggin Hill Airport is now accepting international flights from red-listed countries after receiving UK Government approval as a national entry-point for England.

    Passengers onboard arriving services from red-listed countries must be British and Irish nationals or hold residence rights within the UK. Upon arrival at London Biggin Hill, passengers must quarantine at Government-designated managed hotels for ten days in accordance with current Covid-19 restrictions.

    Andy Patsalides, head of marketing, London Biggin Hill Airport, says: “Initiatives introduced at the airport in response to the Covid-19 pandemic include our ‘Contactless Travel’ initiative, allowing passengers to board and alight aircraft with very limited touchpoints throughout their journey, and our dedicated on-site Covid-19 testing centre, The Mansi Testing Suite. Both have supported our local community and international passengers and crew travelling to and through the airport.”

  8. We could see that one coming a mile off. It’s nearly laughable if it wasn’t for the many small businesses that the government and opposition are willingly destroying with the extra insolvency units set up already to asset grab. They’ve no place in the reset world they want. And statistics via the government in a Daily Mail article yesterday showed that ‘alleged’ deaths from the so called Indian variant (that the Indian government says doesn’t exist) showed deaths amongst the jabbed vs the unjabbed were nearly equal. There is a great propaganda game going on until enough people wake up – Eric Clapton being one of the latest through very bad adverse reactions to the experimental gene therapy which has affected his well-being no end. See Odyssey Films interview via Hugo Talks.

    • In the UK, over 50,000,000 people have been vaccinated. How many have had an adverse reaction of concern?
      Or is that data not available via MSM?

  9. “Respectfulinsolence” has an interesting article about Eric Clapton’s reaction to his vaccinations.

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