Lifting lockdown: five charts to determine Freedom Day delay

Boris Johnson is due to announce a delay to the final step of lockdown reopening as the government races to outpace the spread of the new Covid variant with the vaccination programme.

The PM will urge the public to accept “one last heave” to freedom as he pushes back the 21 June reopening date by up to four weeks, reports The Telegraph.

In what the Daily Mirror calls a “bitter blow” to many businesses, particularly in the hospitality and leisure sectors, nightclubs would stay closed and capacity limits would remain in place for sports, arts, drinking and dining venues.

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Senior ministers are understood to have signed off the delay after a briefing from scientific advisers. Here are some of the numbers they will have been crunching.

Vaccinations

“Downing Street’s argument for the extension is that it buys the country more time to both monitor the Delta variant – first found in India – and, crucially, deliver millions more doses of the vaccine,” explains The Telegraph. Data from gov.uk up to 12 June, shows that 79% of adults have received one jab, while 57% have had both doses.

The Delta problem

The BBC’s Nick Triggle says: “If it wasn’t for the Delta variant, the government would in all likelihood be announcing the go-ahead for a full unlock”. The latest Public Health England (PHE) data suggests it could be 64% more transmissible indoors than the Alpha (Kent) variant, but also that just one vaccine dose does not work as well against the new variant as the previously dominant incarnation. As such, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “The race we are in is to get everyone as far as we possibly can to two doses.”

Rise in cases

The UK recorded 7,490 new Covid cases yesterday, an almost 50% rise on last week. And more than 90% of new cases in the country are now the Delta variant. “The trajectory we are on means we could see January levels of infection by the end of July,” says the BBC’s Triggle.

Hospitalisations

A key question for scientists and policy-makers is how far the vaccines weaken the link between infections, hospitalisations and deaths. The number of people in hospital and on ventilators remains vastly down from the winter peaks, as many older people are protected against the virus.

But The Guardian says “hospital admissions are still expected to rise because not all vulnerable people have had their shots, and some do not mount a robust immune response”. The newspaper says modelling out today is expected to predict that a “four-week pause on lifting the restrictions would probably prevent thousands of hospitalisations”, protecting NHS emergency departments that “are already struggling with intense demand”.

Deaths

Eight new deaths were recorded yesterday, bringing the UK’s total to 127,904. This daily figure is again low compared with the January peaks, but PHE has found that of the 42 people who have died with the Delta variant, 29% were fully vaccinated. A further 16% had received one dose more than three weeks before, while the remaining people were unvaccinated, reports the Daily Mail. “Are these the numbers scaring Boris?” asks the newspaper.

Johnson’s “message to the nation” at this evening’s Downing Street press conference “is expected to be that sticking to the rules now is worth it to avoid a future lockdown”, says the Telegraph. Well-placed Whitehall insiders say the reopening date is likely to be 19 July, with a review after two weeks, says the newspaper. “However,” it adds, “there are fears the delay could ultimately last even longer if the third wave of Covid cases continues to soar.”