Coronavirus: Boris Johnson rips up restrictions for Freedom Day

From July 19, all English business will be allowed to re-open, social distancing will be abandoned and masks will no longer be required.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ripped up a raft of coronavirus measures, handing responsibility back to the public to assess their own personal risk as he confirmed that July 19 will be the country’s “Freedom Day’’.

Under the new rules, all business will be allowed to re-open, any current restrictions on social contact and distancing is to be abandoned and masks will no longer be required. The work from home edict has been scrapped.

In a win for civil liberties, Mr Johnson has declared that there will be no requirement for Covid certificates or proof of vaccination to enter premises and any requirement to register at premises through an app or by providing details will also be eliminated.

Mr Johnson said that further decisions on whether people will be sent home to isolate if anyone in their bubble tests positive will be reassessed.

Similarly a decision on opening up quarantine free travel those who have been double-vaccinated is still to be determined.

The Duchess of Cambridge is currently self-isolating after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus – despite having no symptoms herself, having had both her vaccinations and testing negative four times in the past week. She attended Wimbledon earlier this week in one of her official engagements. Across the country schoolchildren have been forced back home if a schoolmate tests positive.

Mr Johnson, speaking from outside 10 Downing Street, said that running alongside the risks of Covid are the risks of lockdown, including the impact on mental health. He warned if society cannot be reopened in the next few weeks then “we must ask ourselves when will we be able to return to normal”. He said the alternative would be to reopen in winter, “when the virus will have an advantage – or not at all”.

On Monday the UK registered 27,334 cases, with deaths continuing to remain low, with just nine deaths having tested positive to Covid-19 in the past 28 days.

But the prime minister warned there could be 50,000 cases detected each day by the 19th July and said the country had to reconcile to “sadly more deaths from Covid”.

Mr Johnson added: “I don’t want people to feel this is, as it were, the moment to get demob happy, this is the end of Covid restrictions – it is very far from the end of dealing with this virus”.

Chief medical advisor Professor Chris Whitty said there was a certain point “at which instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them”. He said opening up the country may not change the number of people who will go to hospital or die but may change when they happen. He had a strong view that opening in summer has some advantages.

While the legal requirement to wear masks will be removed, the London mayor Sadiq Khan is considering keeping mask-wearing on the London Underground. Union bosses, and teacher unions claim that dropping masks is gross negligence.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has yet to rule if she will adopt a similar mask-free policy.

In a snap poll conducted by UK Telegraph readers, 87 per cent supported the government’s decision to shift the decision to wear a mask to each individual. However an online You Gov poll suggests 70 per cent of people want mask wearing to continue.