A top government adviser says authorities should not be banning people from sunbathing in Britain's parks during the coronavirus lockdown.
Police forces up and down the country have been ordering sunbathers to clear out of public parks.
And people pictured and filmed sunbathing in public greenspaces have copped sharp criticism from other park users.
But according to the Telegraph, advisers to the scientific group tasked with reviewing the UK's lockdown are recommended some rules should be relaxed.
Reports say Sage, which is chaired by the UK's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance is set to recommend the lockdown remains in place while the death toll rises daily.
But the Telegraph reports some advisers want rules that could boost people's wellbeing relaxed, arguing it could be done without causing the infection rate and death toll to increase.
The advisers are said to have been alarmed by authorities in some parts of the UK closing parks and police threatening to arrest sunbathers.
Authorities have been enforcing sunbathing bans amid concerns it promoted social gatherings and threatened the two-metre distancing rules when too many people crowded into parks in fine weather spells.
The allowance for daily exercise has been touted as a key plank of the government's lockdown plan to ensure people can tend to their own wellbeing during anxious times
The parks issue has seen a debate emerge as some warn that the most impoverished people who don't have private gardens will suffer most without access to public greenspaces.
Last week police in Rotherham, South Yorkshire were heavily criticised when a video emerged showing a police officer trying to order a family to stop sunbathing in their private garden.
The issue moved Housing and Communities Secretary Robert Hendrick to tell local authorities across the UK only to close parks as a last resort, after a number of councils shut spaces amid fears people were flouting social distance guidelines.
Reports this morning have suggested the government is likely to announce an extension of the lockdown until at least early May.
But members of Sage have expressed doubts about the some of the stricter rules in the current lockdown, the Telegraph reports.
Professor Robert Dingwall, a sociologist who has been advising UK governments for 30 years, also told the newspaper he saw no evidence to suggest sunbathers could infect other park users with the virus even if they remained less than two metres apart.
Prof Dingwall sits on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory (Nervtag), which advises the Government and Sage.
He told the newspaper: “If it was entirely down to me I would be calling the dogs off. I don’t think it is appropriate to harass sun bathers. It is an indictment of the political and scientific elite that they are not recognising that people living in flats and social housing do not have an alternative to going to parks.”
Prof Dingwall accused some mathematical modellers of promoting an “all or nothing” strategy on social distancing that was being pushed hard by the Government.
He added: “The probability for example of transmission from a jogger running past you is zero.”
The professor claimed the evidence used to come up with the two-metre social distancing rule was based on studies conducted indoors in laboratory conditions.
Indoors in those conditions the virus was able to spread at a distance of one metre.
But Prof Dingwall said that it had been doubled for the government guidelines to promote reassurance.
The latest update from the government on the length of the lockdown is expected to be the focus of today's daily coronavirus briefing.
The briefing will start at about 5pm and will be hosted by Secretary for State Dominic Raab, who gas been deputising for Boris Johnson while the Prime Minister recovers from Covid-19 after his hospital stay.
The lockdown has to be reviewed by law every three weeks.
Mr Raab will tell Brits that they will have to remain at home for at least another three weeks as ministers grapple with an exit strategy, according to The Times.
