COVID-19: Why Reaching The End Of The Lockdown Roadmap Does Not Necessarily Mean The End Of Debates Over Our Freedoms | Political news

When the prime minister presented his cautious (and long) roadmap to freedom in February, he knew there would be obstacles in the way.

Cabinet ministers spoke privately about the new waves of infection as the country gradually unlocked itself.

Would it be around reopening schools (in the end it wasn’t), or getting together with friends in restaurants and pubs (still on hold)?

Or could it be the bane of a new variant of COVID-19[female[feminine could that derail the whole plan?

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Ministers and science advisers couldn’t predict what would cause swings or even derailments, but they could predict, as one minister told me, that “it wouldn’t be a linear path” out of lockdown.

And as we come to the straight line, we hit a big bump in the road with the tightening of the race between the vaccine and the virus.

But after a few rather tense days, there are tentative signs that a complete Freedom Day derailment on June 21 will be avoided.

The Prime Minister in the House of Commons told MPs on Wednesday that he had “growing confidence that the vaccines are effective against all variants, including the Indian variant “- the strongest clue for which the roadmap could stay on track.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam doubled that down at the Downing Street briefing on Wednesday night.

The deputy chief medical officer suggested that the transmissibility of the new variant might be in the range of 25-30%.

He said: “We have a credible range that goes from a few percent more heritable to … 50 percent more heritable. I think most people think it’s going to be somewhere in the middle, rather than at the extremes of. this tape. “

This is critical because at this level of transmissibility, the June 21 unlock should be able to …