Economy may unlock after schools reopen

Continued decline in number of cases deemed key to getting out of lockdown

The United Kingdom's vaccines minister has suggested the economy in England could be unlocked on a gradual basis after the proposed return of schools early next month.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to reveal his roadmap out of the current lockdown on Feb 22, as a part of which schools are likely to start reopening from March 8, and Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News that the plan is for the economy to follow suit, as the vaccine given to priority cases starts to take full effect.

"Mid-February, if you add another three weeks to that when the vaccine protection really does begin to kick in, you're at the first week of March," he said. "So that's when we will begin to first of all open schools and then begin a gradual reopening of the economy, if we continue to see good data."

On Wednesday, the UK reached what Health Minister Matt Hancock called the "hugely significant milestone" of 10 million people having received their first jab.

"Every jab makes us all a bit safer-I want to thank everyone playing their part," he tweeted.

At the same time, one of the members of the government's scientific advisory group, known as SAGE, has said a continued decline in the number of cases in the community is the key to getting out of lockdown.

"It's the number of community cases that drives the number of deaths-that's fairly straightforward," said Andrew Hayward, adding if it were done, "we would be more or less back to normal in the summer, I'd imagine".

His remarks come as figures from NHS England figures revealed that around one in 10 major National Health Service hospital trusts in England had no spare adult critical care beds for the last week in January.

A total of 15 out of 140 acute trusts, including those for cities including Birmingham, Brighton and Portsmouth, reported 100 percent occupancy of all "open" beds each day last week, a slight reduction from the previous week's figure of 18 trusts.

Although the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has reduced considerably, England's chief medical officer has said it remains "a very major problem, but it is one that is heading the right way".

Speaking at a Downing Street media briefing, Chris Whitty said although infection rates were coming down, they are "still incredibly high" and even a minor change would mean "the NHS will get back into trouble extraordinarily fast".

Newly-published data from the UK Biobank revealed the ongoing hidden danger of infection, as around one-quarter of people with COVID-19 were found to be totally asymptomatic, and 40 percent did not show one of the three classic symptoms; loss of taste or smell, a dry cough, or a fever.

This, UK Biobank principal investigator Rory Collins said, showed that it is still "important to maintain the social distancing and the lockdown measures in line with the government guidance".

Proposed quarantine hotels for new arrivals in the UK remain shrouded in confusion, however. Last month Johnson announced the proposal, and on Thursday the vaccines minister told the BBC that an "operational plan" would be announced in "the coming days".

However, Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of hotel industry trade organization UK Hospitality, said hotels "have offered their help to the government, but we are yet to hear any details … we are ready to provide assistance as and when hotels will be needed".

The trade union of Britain's border force staff also said it was in the dark about what its members were supposed to do.

"We don't know if the Border Force officers are going to be expected to determine whether someone should quarantine or not-or whether that will be done on the passenger locator form, or on an honesty basis," said Immigration Services Union representative Lucy Moreton.

More positive news in the fight against the virus has come from the confirmation that, globally, more people have now received a dose of the vaccine than there have been cases of COVID-19.

Data from the University of Oxford and the United States-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 104.9 million doses have been given, as opposed to 104.1 million confirmed cases of infection recorded by Reuters.