Lifting lockdown in April would lead to another ‘enormous wave’ of infections

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Lifting lockdown too early this spring would lead to another “enormous wave" of coronavirus infections, a member of the government’s advisory committee on vaccines has warned. 

Professor Adam Finn cautioned against easing restrictions quickly after everyone in the top four ‘at risk’ groups has received at least one jab.  

That should be by mid-February, if ministers meet current targets.  

Allowing for the fact that the vaccinations take a few weeks to confer protection, Boris Johnson has suggested that schools in England could begin to open by March 8.  

But Prof Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told Times Radio that even April was too early to contemplate life returning to normal again.  

He said: “You could argue when you've immunised all the people at high risk or very large number of them that's the end of the problem.  

“Unfortunately, though, it isn't really, because once we've done that there will still be these vaccines which are not 100 percent effective and not 100 percent of people will have had them. And you do see serious illness in younger people to an extent.  

“There will still be a lot of vulnerable people in the population, in the sense that they've not had the infection. So if we all of a sudden in April sort of said ‘right, this is over’ and went back to normal we would then have another enormous wave of the infection and a lot of people would end up being sick and it would be very disruptive.”

He said the key was to relax measures “quite carefully and slowly” to avoid another lockdown.  

Asked specifically about April he said that was “too early to contemplate normal”.  

But he added: “It's probably not too early to contemplate some kind of shift towards normal and what I'm hoping we'll see is that happens bit by bit, in a cautious way, so that we don't end up having to lock back down again.”

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the controversial tiers system could be scrapped before England next comes out of lockdown.  

The system was criticised for encouraging people to drive to lower tiers to take part in activities that were still legal there, such as shopping.  

A new system could see a nationwide approach adopted, slowing down the lifting of any restrictions until cases had fallen across the entire country.  

No 10 did not deny reports the tiers scheme could be abandoned by ministers.