Matt Hancock has insisted it is right to take a “cautious” approach to easing lockdown restrictions in England despite the vaccine programme going “very well”.
Speaking via video call on Sky News this morning, the nation's Health Secretary said: “I know that everybody at Sky News is keen to be able to get back to having parties and all of us understandably want to get back to normal.
“But it is right to be cautious – it is incredibly important. There are still almost 20,000 people in hospital with Covid right now…
“The vaccination programme, whilst clearly going very well, will take time to be able to reach all people who have significant vulnerability, especially because we need to get the second jab to everybody.
“So, we’ve got time that needs to be taken to get this right. The Prime Minister will set out the road map tomorrow and he will set out the full details – taking into account that we need to take a cautious but irreversible approach, that’s the goal.”
The Health Secretary for England declined to comment on the details of the road map, which has yet to be signed off by Cabinet ministers.
Matt Hancock said Boris Johnson would address the reopening of schools on Monday and told Sky: “We have set out very clearly that getting schools back is the top priority amongst all the different things that we want to do to get life back to normal.”
Mr Hancock went on: “Whilst we want to set out a road map which gives people guidance in terms of how we think we will be able to do this, we also absolutely will be vigilant to the data on the way.
“We have seen throughout this pandemic that there have been moments when things haven’t got as we expected – for instance, when the new variant was first discovered in Kent.”
He said there was evidence that cases of new variants in the UK, such as those discovered in Brazil and South Africa, were falling – as he suggested new border restrictions and enhanced contact tracing are working.
