The lifting of Covid restrictions nationwide have prompted widespread conversations amongst the general public and scholars.
The World Health Organisation’s special envoy on Covid told BBC Breakfast: “I’m a public health person … I would not be making promises some time in the future because, once you make a promise, it’s super hard then to change what you’re going to do – you feel you’re kind of doing a U-turn.
“This virus is constantly evolving and it’s super hard to predict where it will be – we can say where we hope we’re going to go, we can say where we’d like to go, we can say what we think we need to do to get there – but making promises that we’ll do something on a particular date, I think, is unwise.”
This sentiment was shared with Peterborough Matters with 30 per cent of voters stating that restrictions have been lifted much too early, with the pandemic still around with others (13%) expressing the sentiment that the restrictions have been lifted slightly too early.
33% of voters expressed joy at the restrictions being lifted with half saying that such a decision should have been lifted earlier and the other half stating that this was the right timing to lift restrictions.
A minority of voters (10%) expressed wishes that some restrictions should stay in place permanently.
Professor Andrew Hayward, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), who said scientists hope the “direction of travel” for Covid-19 variants is that they become less severe agreeing that the “pandemic will end” and people will live with the virus continuing to transmit, “but causing much less disruption”.
He added: “It will tend to, I think, settle into a seasonal pattern – we may still get quite big winters of infection but not the sort of level where we can justify wholesale societal close down.
“So, I think it is genuinely an optimistic picture, but we’re still not quite there yet.”
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