UK's plan to ease lockdown mired in confusion

London

BRITISH Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday set out a cautious plan to get Britain back to work, including advice on wearing a homemade face covering, though his attempt to unwind the coronavirus lockdown prompted confusion and even satire.

The United Kingdom has the world's second-highest official Covid-19 death toll and, after criticism that he was slow to impose a lockdown, Mr Johnson is extremely wary of triggering a second deadly wave of infection.

"Our plan must countenance a situation where we are in this, together, for the long haul, even while doing all we can to avoid that outcome," Mr Johnson said in a foreward to the 51-page "Our Plan to Rebuild: The UK Government's Covid-19 recovery strategy".

"It is likely that Covid-19 will circulate in the human population long-term, possibly causing periodic epidemics," the plan said. "In the near future, large epidemic waves cannot be excluded without continuing some measures."

The plan includes a staged undertaking to allow businesses to reopen, advice on avoiding public transport and wearing face coverings as well as an 14-day quarantine for most international arrivals.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

There was a lack of specific detail, though, on what employers should do to ensure the safety of workers. The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said they were sticking with the existing "stay-at-home" message.

Opposition parties said his "Stay Alert" message was meaningless against a virus invisible to the naked eye and that Mr Johnson's messaging was confusing. Lawyers said some employers were confused about who should be working and when.

After weeks of declining to tell the British people to wear face coverings amid contradictory scientific advice on the utility of such masks, the government said face coverings should be worn in enclosed spaces where distancing is impossible.

"Homemade cloth face-coverings can help reduce the risk of transmission in some circumstances," the plan said. "Face-coverings are not intended to help the wearer, but to protect against inadvertent transmission of the disease to others if you have it asymptomatically."

Public Health England even published an accompanying description on how to make a face covering from an old T-shirt, along with cutting advice and how to sew a homemade face covering. It said a sewing machine was optional.

Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson's presentation had raised many questions and was perplexing. "It's a bit all over the place," he said.

Trade union leader Len McCluskey said Mr Johnson the prime minister had confused people: "Millions of people this morning will be completely dumbfounded."

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the only modification she was making to lockdown measures was to allow people to exercise more.

Mr Johnson's stern address to the nation prompted satire.

"So we are saying don't go to work, go to work, don't take public transport, go to work, don't go to work," comedian Matt Lucas said in a short video which was watched almost four million times on Twitter. "If you can work from home, go to work. And then we will or won't, something or other."

On Sunday, Mr Johnson announced a phased plan to ease a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, with schools and shops to begin opening from June 1 - as long as infection rates stay low.

In a televised address, Mr Johnson also announced plans to introduce quarantine for people arriving in Britain by air to prevent new infections from abroad.

He did not give any detail about the quarantine plan, but officials suggested that it could be introduced in the coming weeks and would last 14 days. While initially proposed for people arriving from abroad by plane, it could be extended to ports and train stations.

Mr Johnson's office said France would be exempt from the quarantine, after Paris excluded Britain from its own similar plans, while media reports suggest there will also be a waiver for Ireland.

Airlines UK, the trade body for UK-registered carriers, had previously warned such a measure would "effectively kill international travel to and from the UK".

But officials say that if infection rates fall within Britain, stopping new cases from abroad will be an important tool.

Mr Johnson, who himself spent a week in hospital with Covid-19, said the measures had come "at a colossal cost to our way of life" but said it would be "madness" to squander the progress by moving too soon.

"This is not the time simply to end the lockdown this week," the 55-year-old said, but unveiled a "conditional plan" to ease the measures in England in the months ahead.

Starting this week, he said the government would be "actively encouraging" people to return to work where they could not do so from home, for example in manufacturing or construction.

Unlimited outdoor exercise would be allowed from Wednesday, with sports such as golf, tennis and fishing permitted as long as they only involved members of the same household.

In the second phase, Mr Johnson said children up to the age of 11 could start to return to school from June 1 at the earliest, and some non-essential shops could reopen.

By July, "we will hope to re-open at least some of the hospitality industry and other public places" that could enforce social distancing, for example cafes in parks.

However, officials warned that pubs were not likely to reopen for months, while older school children were unlikely to see any return to classes until September.

Infection rates will also be closely monitored under a new alert system, which will build upon existing moves to ramp up testing and contact tracing.

"If there are outbreaks, if there are problems, we will not hesitate to put on the brakes," Mr Johnson said.

"We have been through the initial peak, but it is coming down the mountain that is often more dangerous."

Mr Johnson has been criticised for failing to take the outbreak seriously enough at the start, still shaking hands with people in early March and delaying the imposition of a lockdown.

But there are growing demands from his own MPs to get the economy moving again, particularly after the Bank of England predicted a 14-percent slump in British GDP this year. REUTERS