LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson offers Britons their first detailed look at what a post-pandemic society might look like on Monday, announcing twice a week free coronavirus tests in England and Covid status certificates showing people with immunity in busy nightclubs and allow sporting events. .
The plans were the next step in the cautious reopening of the UK government’s economy, and its first attempt to address thorny questions about how to distinguish between people who are protected against the virus and those who are still vulnerable, because the country normally returns to normalcy. .
“I will go to the bar myself and pick up a line of beer carefully, but irreversibly, to my lips,” said Mr. Johnson said at a news conference in 10 Downing Street while mentioning the next round of relaxed restrictions.
When trying to find a balance between public health and personal freedoms, he said Britain would design a system to confirm the Covid status of anyone wishing to establish higher institutions. Although pubs and non-essential stores may be allowed to claim proof of Covid-free status, they do not have to.
Britain has long resisted the idea of requiring people to carry identity documents, and for some in the country, this authority is authoritarian. The leader of the opposition Labor Party, Keir Starmer, recently suggested that Covid ‘passports’ could be against the ‘British instinct’.
Mr. Johnson acknowledged the sensitivity and pointed out that the certification plan would not be launched for several months. The government plans to test the program on rehearsal rooms, from a comedy club and nightclub in Liverpool to the FA Cup football final at Wembley Stadium.
“You have to be very careful about dealing with it,” he said, “and not start a discriminatory system.”
As of next week, the prime minister has said non-essential shops, hairdressers and beer gardens will be allowed in pubs in England again. But he was much more cautious about foreign travel and did not want to say whether the government would stick to its earlier target of May 17 to lift a ban on overseas holidays.
Britain plans to classify countries according to a traffic light system, with visitors from green countries not having to isolate themselves, visitors from amber countries having to isolate themselves at home for days, and visitors from red countries having to be quarantined in hotels.
As more than 31 million people have been given at least one vaccine, and the country is still largely locked up, Britain has dramatically pushed its new cases, hospital admissions and deaths due to the virus. As a result, Mr. Johnson’s focus shifts to running an increasingly open society.
One of his most ambitious plans is to offer free quick test kits to the entire population so that people can test themselves regularly. The kits, already used by hospitals and schools, are available by mail or at pharmacies.
Public health experts have praised the gradual pace of government action, which they say is appropriate for a country where the virus is still circulating, even with declining death rates and a rapid explosion of the vaccine. But they expressed skepticism about the test program and questioned whether people would have the incentive to put themselves through a test twice a week.
“Testing only works if people are isolated on the basis of a positive result,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. “But if they can not go to work and lose their income, what is the incentive to be tested?”
Britain’s experience with testing and detection was one of the most ominous parts of its pandemic performance. Even now, according to experts, it isolates only a quarter to half of those who come in contact with people who test positive for the virus.
“There is still no proper attempt at supported isolation, and an obsession with testing rates without it being clear what the purpose of testing is,” said David King, a former British government chief scientific adviser. who is an outspoken critic of his response to the pandemic.
While Professor King ascribed to the government that he had finally become more cautious, he said: “The level of the virus in the country is so high that there is still no reason to think that we are not with this.”
The announcement of Covid certification follows weeks of conflicting signals. In February, Nadhim Zahawi, the minister responsible for deploying vaccines, described its use for anything other than foreign travel as wrong and discriminatory. Last month, Johnson suggested that individual pubs could decide to require Covid passports before serving customers.
According to the current thinking of the government, the certification applies to people who are vaccinated, who have recently been tested negative for the virus or who can prove a natural immunity against the recovery of Covid.
Opposition comes from defenders of civil liberties on the left and libertarians on the right. Last week, more than 70 lawmakers signed a letter opposing the “divisive and discriminatory use” of Covid passports. They included more than 40 conservative lawmakers who are part of the Covid Recovery Group, a caucus of lawmakers who have criticized the closure measures.
In the Daily Telegraph, Graham Brady, chairman of an influential group of conservative backbenchers, writes that Covid passports make little practical sense because many young people are unlikely to be offered a vaccination by the time the government plans to ‘ to reopen a large part of the economy. . Fundamental principles are also at stake, he said.
“At the beginning of last year, patient confidentiality was a sacred principle, and the idea that other people could inspect our medical records was anathema,” he said. Brady wrote. “Now the state is considering us to announce our Covid status as a condition of going to the bar or cinema.”
Given the skepticism of the Labor leader, Mr. Starmer, the government knows that if it goes too far, he could lose a vote on the measure in parliament.
Some view the arguments on civil liberties as a more balanced one. Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer and expert on Covid laws, said the government should tread carefully because of privacy issues and because a system like this could put them in conflict with anti-discrimination laws, for example for people who because of a disability cannot be vaccinated. ”
But he added that there is still a valid civil liberties argument for the introduction of vaccine passports.
“Closing is a very serious imposition of everyone’s freedoms and increasingly a hammer to crack a nut,” said Mr. Wagner said. ‘One way to reduce the possibility of contagion is for people who are not contagious, or who are less likely to be contagious, to do more things that people normally do than those who are contagious or who are more prone to being contagious to be. ”