British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under increased dilemma to lift all COVID-19 lockdowns in two and a half months as lockdown-skeptic Tories called on him to commit to a timetable for easing the restrictions with a complete end to controls by the end of April.
In a letter to the prime minister, leaders of the Covid Recovery Group said the "tremendous pace" of the vaccination rollout means restrictions in England should begin easing from early March, the a local newspaper reported on Sunday. The letter was organised by the CRG chair and deputy chair, Mark Harper and Steve Baker, and was said to have the backing of 63 Conservative Party lawmakers in all.
The letter was sent to the prime minister at a time when a government scientific advisor warned that Britain could face another coronavirus wave as big as the current one if lockdown restrictions were all lifted.
They said ministers must produce a cost-benefit analysis to justify any controls that remain in place after that date, with a "road-map" stating when they would be removed, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
Professor Steven Riley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, has said the rollout of the vaccination program did not mean coronavirus controls could be dropped.
"No vaccine is perfect," he told a BBC radio program. "We are certainly going to be in the situation where we can allow more infection in the community but there is a limit."
"If for some reason we were to choose to just pretend the virus wasn't here anymore then there is the potential to go back to a wave that is a similar size to the one that we are in now," he added.
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.
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