The UK’s Final Unlocking?

Whilst India struggles to find the space to cremate the victims of Covid, the UK entered the penultimate stage of its ‘unlocking’ this week. The new phase means that people can stay in other people’s houses, go on holiday, sit indoors at restaurants and are now even allowed to hug each other. The fundamental nature of the previous restrictions reflects the unprecedented period the country has emerged from, having the worst death rates in Europe and some of the tightest and longest periods of lockdown to emerging into the spring sunshine (what little there is) with renewed hope.

The UK’s early and significant investment in a plethora of vaccines and the strength of its scientific and medical expertise has put it in a seemingly good place to enter the post-Covid era early. A recent study revealed that more than 90% of Britons develop antibodies to coronavirus after having one dose of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines. Just under 70% of the UK’s adult population have had at least one jab and the double whammy of a prolonged lockdown and rapid vaccination programme is now giving many the freedoms to live a life far closer to normality.

Significant hurdles and questions remain, however. The US recently scrapped its mask policy for fully vaccinated people indoors. The future of masks and social distancing in particular remain two outstanding questions that await the next five-week period in the UK as analysts’ study with forensic detail the data as to whether the new freedoms drive new infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

This time lag between policy change and Covid response has been one of the harder decision-making processes to manage. Such is the exponential rate of growth of Covid under pre-vaccination times that carefully thought out tiering or local lockdown plans were quickly overwhelmed by the surge of infections forcing tighter lockdowns in turn. All eyes in the UK are now focused on the latest variant of concern, the ‘Indian variant’ that is supposedly 50% more infections than the ‘UK variant’ that was potentially as high as 70% higher than the original Wuhan variant.

These are sobering and slightly terrifying numbers but of course the scale and range of treatments, let along vaccines, means that the battlelines are considerably different than in previous months since the start of the Pandemic. The UK’s response to the emergence of the ‘Indian variant’ may have been slightly belated in terms of travel restrictions but has prompted a renewed vigour around pushing vaccinations.

The British Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, toured media studios over the weekend and highlighted how the majority of those in hospital with the “Indian variant” were unvaccinated. Whilst the US has accelerated beyond expectations on vaccinations the combination of large chunks of vaccine hesitancy combined with the more infectious variants leads medical experts to believe that the much hoped for ‘herd immunity’ is impossible.

The UK has been hampered by supply issues in rolling out first vaccines down the age bands, largely due to Indian production being more directed domestically. The ‘Indian variant’ has focused minds around getting the rates of vaccinated up in key areas of concern. What is more local lockdowns remain a possibility in some parts of England, as “intensive surveillance” continues in areas with high coronavirus rates, a cabinet minister has said.

Back in 2020 the Prime Minister promised an end to having to reimpose lockdowns but was overtaken by events and the ‘UK variant’, there are considerable questions as to how the UK public would respond to another series of lockdowns following the prolonged nature of those so far. Indeed, whilst billions of pounds have been spent on the test and track scheme the gap in the UK approach has always been around the ‘isolation’ pillar, and people from poorer background in particularly not being able to afford to stay away from work.

With the UK economy expected to boom now that restrictions are being eased the prospect of reversing policy will not be an attractive one for the government. What is more with such high levels of the most vulnerable population having had both of their vaccines, we could find ourselves in a scenario where we see rising infections amongst younger age bands which don’t correspond in the same levels of hospital pressure or mortality than in previous waves. The bottom line is that whilst the UK is unlocking the government is not throwing away the key and is already preparing the narrative for a return to forms of restrictions.

by: James Denselow

James Denselow,