By Elli Collins
With Coronavirus going on for over a year, it looked as though there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
However, in a recent press conference on 22nd February, Boris Johnson seems to have paved the way back to normal life.
An article from BBC explains how the roadmap will work. Summing up the article, the roadmap to ‘freedom’ is:
On March 8th, all schools and colleges reopen. Two people can meet outside for a walk, including a “coffee on a bench”.
On 29th March people will be allowed to meet outside with another household or within the rule of six, including private gardens. Also organised sport can restart outside.
On April 12th, all shops are allowed to reopen. Restaurants and pub gardens will be allowed to serve customers sitting outdoors, including alcohol.
On May 17th, people can meet outside in up to groups of 30. Six people, or two households can meet indoors. Hotels can reopen.
On June 21st, all legal limits on social contact will be removed. Nightclubs will reopen.
“I think this roadmap is a good plan for the country to come out of lockdown,” said 40-year-old gas engineer Samuel Humphries. “The dates are all depending on the cases, so if all is good and people keep getting the vaccine. Normal life won’t be too far away.”
Cases in England have been decreasing since we were put back into lockdown, and people started getting the vaccine.
According to the daily summary of COVID-19 data on Gov.uk, the number of daily cases has gone down 16% with 6,035 people testing positive daily. Similarly, the number of deaths has decreased by 1.14% at a daily average of 144.
“I can’t wait to go back to normal life, but I think the roadmap is optimistic,” said Helen Maguire, 28, a stay-at-home mum. “I think sending children back to school might be premature, seeing as cases will begin to rise again.
“I understand how important education is, and the amount of face-to-face learning time children have lost is awful, I just worry about the cases rising and my children contracting the virus, or even the new variants.”
Picture credit: Element5 Digital on Unsplash
There has been news of a few different variants of COVID-19 in different countries. Only recently has there been news of the variant from Brazil entering the UK.
According to an article by Centres of Disease Control and Prevention, “[These] variants seem to spread more easily and quickly than other variants, which may lead to more cases of COVID-19. An increase in the number of cases will put more strain on health care resources, lead to more hospitalizations, and potentially more deaths.”
With news of these new variants spreading rapidly, who really knows whether life will go back to normal this year.
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