Dominic Raab backs chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, who has said that the public must remain under current measures until the peak of coronavirus has passed.
The British public has been warned that there is a long way to go before the current lockdown measures, which are in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, are to be relaxed.
In Boris Johnson’s initial briefing on 23 March, he stated that after three weeks under lockdown the government would evaluate and review the success of the current measures and update us on whether any changes are to be made.
Following this, as the country now enters its third week under lockdown, the current measures have been reviewed and the UK’s chief scientific adviser has said that he expects that the number of deaths as a result of coronavirus will continue to rise this week, before hitting a plateau which could last up to three weeks.
During a daily Downing Street press briefing, Vallance implied that it would only be safe to relax some of the current restrictions once the UK was firmly on the other side of coronavirus, meaning that the lockdown measures in place could easily last another month.
These comments have been backed by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, who is deputising for the prime minister while he recovers from Covid-19.
However, ministers are now looking at proposals which would involve the current restrictions being removed gradually, with some social distancing measures being maintained until the end of the year.
The government must decide by Thursday this week whether they will renew the three-week lockdown period. Raab has also said that any formal decision on how to ease the lockdown would be taken after ministers had received evidence from the scientific advisory group for emergencies.
