Richard Madeley locked horns with Doctor Hilary Jones over the ditching of restrictions as he returned to Good Morning Britain on Monday.
Following on from Martin Lewis' stint as guest host last week, former This Morning presenter Richard was back behind the GMB desk to join Susanna Reid.
And, with the country still on a high from England's 4-0 win over Ukraine on Saturday night and an announcement due tonight on restrictions easing, Richard declared: "This is the first show I've come in thinking we've basically got nothing but good news - the football, the 19th... we can relax and celebrate a bit."
READ MORE: What to expect from Boris Johnson's 'Freedom Day' announcement
Not quite as jubilant, Susanna replied: "Erm, infections are going up. You know that? Hospitalisations are going up."
Wading in, resident medic Doctor Hilary said: "Look, in Australia, they’ve got a fraction of the cases we have and half the country’s in lockdown.
"Here we’re thinking of banning all restrictions and when we’ve got cases going up 74 percent in a week and 55 percent of hospitalisations are up in a week.”
However, Richard wasn't satisfied with Dr Hilary's response and fired back: "You're using percentages to make a case here but don't you think that's a bit misleading?
"The percentage rise has gone up, it sounds a lot but in real numbers it's not a lot."
Standing firm on his opinion, Dr Hilary responded "But it's increasing. We've got millions of people who still haven't been vaccinated.
"We've got a variant that is more transmissible. And as some experts have said, it's a factory to develop new variants.
"What if we get a new variant come along that's resistant to the current vaccines we use? The whole thing is out of the window."
Still not on board with Dr Hilary's explanations, Richard then put him on the spot, asking*: "What are you saying? That we shouldn't have Freedom Day on the 19th?"
"We've already got freedom," blasted Dr Hilary.
"We've got lots of freedom. I'm saying people need to exercise restraint."
