Boris Johnson has presented a five point plan to keep the country out of lockdown.
Now that most of all the legal restrictions have been lifted, after a four week delay, England enters Stage Four of the Government's lockdown exit plan.
Nightclubs have reopened, social distancing has been scrapped and the use of face coverings made a matter of "personal choice".
READ MORE: What you still can't do from July 19 as lockdown eases
When he announced the lockdown exiting roadmap in the winter, Boris Johnson said it was "cautious but irreversible".
Last night the Prime Minister laid out a five point plan he hopes will keep future lockdowns away, the Mirror reports.
The five point plan is:
- Reinforce vaccine defences by reducing the dosing interval from 12 to 8 weeks for all adults.
- Emphasising caution and personal responsibility as cases continue to rise.
- The test, trace and isolate system will remain, with all positive cases legally required to self-isolate. Contacts of positive cases are required to self-isolate until the 16 August, after which adults who have received two vaccine doses and all under 18s will be exempt.
- Border controls will be maintained, including quarantine for all those travelling from a red list country, and for amber list countries unless double vaccinated.
- Data will be continually assessed and contingency measures retained if needed during higher risk periods, but restrictions will be avoided if possible.
The plan to lift restrictions in England may have been in place for many months, but now its upon us some experts have warned infection rates could soar.
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose initial modelling helped shape Britain’s coronavirus lockdown strategy, has warned that the country could soon be enduring 200,000 coronavirus infections a day.
Prof Ferguson said: "If you have enough cases, you can still have quite significant burden on the healthcare system … major disruption of services and cancellation of elective surgery and the backlog in the NHS getting longer and longer."
Despite this, the Government is insisting that the link between cases and hospitalisations and deaths is "substantially weakened due to the vaccination programme."
Speaking in a video posted on Twitter, Mr Johnson said: "Go forward tomorrow into the next step with all the right prudence and respect for other people and the risks that the disease continues to present.
"And, above all, please, please, please when you’re asked to get that second jab and get your jab, please come forward and do it."
The plea came after Johnson invoked the fury of tens of thousands of people stuck inside on the hottest day of the year so far by delivering one of the government's sharpest u-turns yet.
Yesterday No 10 announced that Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak would carry on working in Downing Street while taking daily tests, having come into contact with coronavirus positive Health Minister Sajid Javid.
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