LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered the British their first detailed glimpse into what a post-pandemic society would look like on Monday, announcing free coronavirus tests twice a week in England and Covid status certificates that would allow people with immunity entering crowded nightclubs and sporting events.
The plans were the next step in the cautious reopening of the economy by the British government and its first effort to tackle thorny questions about how to distinguish between people who are protected from the virus and those who are still vulnerable, as the country returns to normal.
“I will go to the pub myself and bring a pint of beer to my lips cautiously, but irreversibly,” Johnson said at a press conference at 10 Downing Street, as he listed the next round of relaxed restrictions.
Trying to strike a balance between public health and personal freedoms, he said Britain would design a system to certify Covid’s status to anyone looking to enter high-risk environments. Although non-essential pubs and stores may require proof of Covid’s free status, they will not be required to do so.
Britain has long resisted the idea of requiring people to carry identity documents, and for some in the country, this issue has authoritarian overtones. Opposition Labor Party leader Keir Starmer recently suggested that Covid’s “passports” could be against “British instinct”.
Mr. Johnson recognized the sensitivities and pointed out that the certification plan would not be implemented for a few months. The government plans to test the program at pilot sites, from a comedy club and nightclub in Liverpool to the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium.
“You have to be very careful when dealing with this,” he said, “and not to start a discriminatory system.”
Starting next week, the prime minister said non-essential stores, hairdressers and pubs in England could reopen. But he was much more cautious about traveling abroad, refusing to say whether the government would stick to its previous May 17 goal of lifting the ban on overseas holidays.
Britain plans to classify countries according to a traffic light system, with visitors from green countries not being forced to isolate, visitors from amber countries forced to isolate at home for several days and those from red countries forced to remain in quarantine in hotels.
With more than 31 million people receiving at least one vaccine, and the country still largely confined, Britain has drastically reduced its new cases, hospital admissions and deaths from the virus. As a result, Mr. Johnson’s focus has shifted to managing an increasingly open society.
One of his most ambitious plans is to offer free rapid test kits to the entire population, so that people can get tested on a routine basis. The kits, already used by hospitals and schools, will be available by post or in pharmacies.
Public health experts applauded the gradual pace of government measures, which they said were appropriate for a country in which the virus was still circulating, despite declining mortality rates and a rapid release of vaccines. But they expressed skepticism about the testing program, questioning whether people would have an incentive to take a test twice a week.
“The test only works if people isolate themselves based on a positive result,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. “But if they can’t work and are going to lose income, what is the incentive to take the test?”
Britain’s experience with testing and tracking has been one of the most abysmal parts of its pandemic performance. Even now, experts say, it isolates only a quarter to half of people who come into contact with people who test positive for the virus.
“There is still no adequate effort to support isolation and an obsession with testing fees with no apparent understanding of the purpose of the tests,” said David King, a former British government chief scientific adviser who openly criticizes his response to the pandemic.
Although Professor King credited the government for finally becoming more cautious, he said: “the level of the virus in the country is so high that there is no reason to think that we are still out of it.”
Covid’s certification announcement follows weeks of mixed signals. In February, Nadhim Zahawi, the minister responsible for launching the vaccine, described its use for anything other than a trip abroad as “wrong and discriminatory”. Last month, Johnson suggested that it would be up to each pubs to decide whether to require Covid passports before serving customers.
According to current government thinking, the certification would apply to people who have been vaccinated, who have recently tested negative for the virus or who can prove natural immunity because they have recovered from Covid.
The opposition comes from both civil liberties defenders on the left and libertarians on the right. Last week, more than 70 lawmakers signed a letter opposing the “divisive and discriminatory use” of Covid’s passports. They included more than 40 conservative lawmakers who are part of the Covid Recovery Group, a caucus of lawmakers who criticized the blockade measures.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Graham Brady, who chairs an influential group of conservative backbenchers, argued that Covid’s passports make little practical sense because many young people are unlikely to have received the vaccination when the government plans to reopen much of the economy. Fundamental principles are also at stake, he said.
“At the beginning of last year, patient confidentiality was a sacred principle and the idea that other people could inspect our medical records was anathema,” Brady wrote. “Now the state is thinking of forcing us to disclose our Covid status as a condition for going to the pub or the cinema.”
Given the skepticism of Labor leader Starmer, the government knows that if it goes too far, it could lose a vote on the measure in Parliament.
Still, some consider the civil liberties arguments more balanced. Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer and expert in Covid-related laws, said the government needed to act cautiously because of privacy issues and because “a system like this could put them on a collision course with anti-discrimination laws. , for example, for people who cannot be vaccinated because of a disability. “
But he added that there was, however, a valid civil liberties argument for introducing vaccine passports.
“The blockade is a very serious imposition on everyone’s freedom and increasingly a hammer to break a nut,” said Wagner. “One way to reduce the possibility of blockage is to allow people who are not infectious, or less likely to be infectious, to do more things than people normally do than those who are infectious or who are more likely to be infectious. “