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Readers voted in our poll on whether the Prime Minister should scrap the two-metre restriction. Some 57 percent said yes, while 42 percent said no and one percent did not know.

Commenting on the poll, one reader said: “Yes scrap it, nobody bothers with it anyway.”

Another wrote: “We have immune systems for a reason and they have to be allowed to do their job.

“In the case of the elderly, fine, they should probably observe some basic measures to avoid infection, but the rest of us need exposure to this virus to build up immunity or we’ll be right back here again in six months.”

A third added: “Bring it down to one meter if you are wearing a mask.”

One said: “This is just a formality, no one is following the rules anyway, everywhere I go people are bumping into each other in supermarkets and shops!”

But another wrote: “Difficult one, our society works on the basis of close contact between people, and we lock people away in prisons to punish them.

“However, we know that the virus depends on close contact between the host and potential hosts to multiply.

“We have been told that the greater the distance between us in combination with scrupulous hygiene the less likely the chances of becoming infected.

“At the moment the infection rate is dropping but still quite high, and we might wonder, if the advised safest distance between two people is reduced by 50 percent, will the infection rate increase by 50 percent?”

Mr Johnson has promised to keep the two-metre social distancing measure under review.

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But there have been calls to halve the distance to help businesses such as pubs and restaurants reopen and allow more children to return to school.

Some countries including France, Denmark and Singapore have been following a one-metre rule.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended a minimum distance of one metre between people from different households.

On June 1, researchers in the Lancet medical journal backed social distancing of “one metre or more” but added that “two metres could be more effective”.

Conservative MPs including former cabinet ministers Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Damian Green have urged the Government to reduce the two-metre rule to save the economy.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma has said the restriction would be amended “when it is safe to do so”.

He told the Commons on Tuesday: “We are taking a cautious view on this.

“I completely understand why for economic reasons businesses will want to have a look at this two-metre rule.”

Speaking in the Commons today, Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “The Government is, of course, considering this in relation with its scientific advisers.

“But I think we need to think back to our school days because it’s all about Pi-R-squared.

“That if the radius is doubled, the area quadruples and that is the difference that is made, but that applies both to the numbers you can include in an area, but also to the transmission of the disease and that is why the Government is considering these issues in both directions.”

Express.co.uk polled 4,209 people on June 11.

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