Boris Johnson's reopening plans are 'staggering' says host

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Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon discussed Boris Johnson’s decision to relax coronavirus restrictions in England on Australia’s Today programme. Mr Stefanovic grimaced as he assessed the Covid plan despite the rising number of coronavirus cases across the UK.

Mr Stefanovic said: “The developments in London overnight are staggering.

“They are loosening up restrictions, not having to wear masks, no social distancing.

“They have come under plenty of criticism from chief medics.”

Ms Langdon replied: “They are still getting 20,000 to 30,000 cases a day.”

Mr Stefanovic added: “We are no medical experts but it seems a bit…”

The TV host then grimaced while looking towards the camera.

On Monday evening, Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined the UK’s Government move to release a number of restrictions on July 19.

Mr Johnson said: “I want to set out what our lives would be like from the 19th of this month – which is only a few days away – if and when we move to step 4 – a decision we will finally take on the 12th – and I want to stress from the outset that this pandemic is far from over and it will certainly not be over by 19th.  

Boris Johnson reinforces plans to end lockdown on July 19th

“As we predicted in the roadmap we’re seeing cases rise fairly rapidly – and there could be 50,000 cases detected per day by the 19th and again as we predicted, we’re seeing rising hospital admissions and we must reconcile ourselves sadly to more deaths from Covid.

“In these circumstances, we must take a careful and a balanced decision.

“And there is only one reason why we can contemplate going ahead to step 4 – in circumstances where we’d normally be locking down further – and that’s because of the continuing effectiveness of the vaccine roll-out.

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“When we paused step 4 a few weeks ago, we had two reasons. First, we wanted to get more jabs into people’s arms – and we have, with over 45 million adults now having received a first dose and 33 million a second.

“That is a higher proportion of the adult population of any European country except Malta, and our expectation remains that by July 19 every adult will have had the chance to receive a first dose and two-thirds will have received their second dose.

“And second, we wanted a bit more time to see the evidence that our vaccines have helped to break the link between disease and death.

“And as the days have gone by it has grown ever clearer that these vaccines are indeed successful with the majority of those admitted to hospital unvaccinated.”

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