The more elaborate summer holiday plans, the more likely you will have to cancel them says Van Tam
The more elaborate your summer holiday plans, the more likely you’ll have to cancel them, Professor Van Tam warns
- England’s deputy chief medical officer says it’s too soon to start planning trips
- Professor Jonathan Van Tam told the news briefing it would be a guessing game
- He said any easing of lockdown restrictions would have to take place ‘gradually’
England’s deputy chief medical officer has warned against organising elaborate holiday this year as it is still too soon to say whether or not they should start making plans.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam was asked about holidays and said he could not give a proper answer as the data is not yet available.
Speaking at the No 10 news briefing, he said: ‘The more elaborate your plans are for summer holidays, in terms of crossing borders, in terms of household mixing, given where we are now, I think we just have to say the more you are stepping into making guesses about the unknown at this point.’
He said it was too soon to say to what extent people could begin to start planning summer holidays.
‘I can’t give people a proper answer at this point because we don’t yet have the data. It’s just too early.’
He said any easing of lockdown restrictions in England would have to take place ‘gradually’ and that contemplating what will happen in summer is stepping into the realm of a guessing game.
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, has warned Britons against making elaborate holiday plans as it is too soon to tell what will be allowed this year
Prof Van-Tam added: ‘Public health counter measures, non-pharmaceutical interventions, social distancing restrictions, they will have to be released gradually.
‘How quickly they can be released will depend upon three things – the virus, the vaccine and the extent to which the public obey the rules that are in place, which thankfully the vast majority always do.’
Prof Van-Tam added: ‘The key with this coronavirus is again through vaccination, to take the whole curve and shift it to the left, so the vast majority of the illness is an illness that is manageable in the community – as opposed to causing enormous pressure on our hospitals.
‘And we can do that through vaccination, and if we do that we open up a whole way of living normally – much more normally – again in the future.’
It comes as Department of Health figures show another 333 Covid victims were recorded today, the lowest 24-hour toll since December 27 and a drop of 18 per cent on the 406 last Monday.
Another 14,104 infections were also added to the official tally. The daily figure has dropped by a quarter week-on-week, with today’s number lower than at any time since December 8.
Analysis shows infection rates are lower than at any time since before Christmas in all four nations of the UK.
While the big picture shows infections are falling in most parts of the country, the decline is slow and positive tests were still rising in 17 areas in the week ending February 3.
One of those areas was Rutland in the Midlands, where new infections more than doubled from 180 per 100,000 people to 386.
And in another glimmer of hope that Britain could be freed from lockdown restrictions within weeks, another 278,988 people got their first dose of a vaccine yesterday.
Despite being one of the slowest days of the rollout so far, it means 12.3million Britons have now been immunised.
Meanwhile, Britain’s hotel quarantine scheme came under fresh criticism on Sunday when it emerged 35 countries where mutant coronavirus strains have been found are not on the list.
Last week, the Government confirmed that all passengers from 33 ‘red list’ countries would have to quarantine for ten days in a hotel from February 15.
But an analysis carried out by the World Health Organisation has found dozens of countries where the highly-infectious South African and Brazilian variants have been found are not on the list.
They include Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and the United States.
Labour Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds reacted with fury at the news, branding the Government’s quarantine measures ‘dangerously inadequate’.
Scientists also said the oversight was ‘not good enough’, adding that the virus ‘spreads like wildfire’.
The WHO analysis, which was reported by the Sunday Times, also found that the Brazilian Covid strain has been found in ten nations, six of which have not been added to the UK red list.
As well as South Africa and Brazil, nations which are also on the list include Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Rwanda and Botswana.
But of the 41 countries which the WHO’s report said the South African strain had spread to, 29 of them do not feature on Britain’s red list.
Overall, it means arrivals from 35 counties were more infectious strains which could beat or limit the effect of the available coronavirus vaccines will be free to avoid the hotel scheme when they land in Britain.
Instead, they will be trusted to quarantine at home for ten days.
