There is a fine line for the government to tread over Covid-19 restrictions

Sir Mark Walport, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, has urged people to be “patient for a short period”, pointing out that there are only two weeks until the planned reopening of indoor hospitality on 17 May. He is right, and the vast majority of the population has been surprisingly tolerant of the restrictions. However, there is a danger in such appeals that the balance is tipped too far the other way.

“The truth is the virus has not gone away,” said Sir Mark, which is true – but the vaccines have changed the situation, and so the easing of the lockdown now cannot be compared with previous relaxations. Sir Mark said “the mistake that has been made repeatedly is relaxing just slightly too early”. It seems more likely that the mistake was in failing to impose restrictions quickly enough.

Care must be taken, but most of the vulnerable population has now been protected – even if no protection can ever be total – so the consequences of getting it wrong are nothing like as serious as they were, while the costs of restrictions continue to accumulate.

One of the huge costs of lockdowns was the isolation of the often mentally frail in care homes, where the risks of the virus had to be balanced against the impact on wellbeing of residents not allowed visitors or, when they were allowed to meet their loved ones, being forced to isolate for 14 days afterwards. The purpose of the restrictions has been primarily to protect the elderly, yet too many of those in care homes feel that the wrong balance has been struck and they have suffered unnecessarily.

The government has now scrapped the 14-day isolation rule for care homes in England, but this welcome decision should have come earlier. It is an example of how the government is in fact pragmatically relaxing some of the restrictions without waiting for “no earlier than” dates which were set out in the roadmap in February.

Obviously, international travel for holidays is less important, and although the travel companies are desperate for their businesses to reopen, the general public seems willing to wait. The government insists that it has not missed a deadline by failing to publish the list of countries to which holiday travel will be permitted from 17 May – the 1 May date was set by the Transport Select Committee, not by the government. But opinion polls suggest that most people, far from agitating for the travel restrictions to be lifted, want them to last longer than 17 May.

Sir Mark said that “it seems increasingly unlikely” that we will see a resurgence of infections in the UK. Only yesterday Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at Cambridge university, reported an early study that confirmed that vaccines are effective against the Indian variant B1617, and urged people to stop using the scaremongering term “double mutant”.

So while Sir Mark is right to urge people to be cautious, comparing to previous lockdown situations may not be as helpful as he thinks. Patience is needed, but the “right” line is a difficult one to tread.