LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that "it's no moment to relax" in spite the achievement of the country's vaccine rollout as the threat of Covid-19 "remains very real".Johnson made the remarks as Britain has hit its target to complete the vaccination of the top priority groups, which cover 15 million people, by mid-February.

The Prime Minister urged patience with the easing of the restrictions as he is hopeful to unveil his plan for exiting the lockdown on February 22. "Next week I will be setting out a road map saying as much as we possibly can about the route to normality and even though some things are very uncertain because we want this lockdown to be the last and we want progress to be cautious, but also irreversible," he said.

Joining Johnson for the briefing, Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty said that even though the number of coronavirus cases are coming down, the infection levels remain "quite high".  "The numbers are coming down steadily over time, but they're still at quite a high level and above the point where it was, for example, in September last year. So significant progress, but still quite high," he said.

Meanwhile, hospital rates are "still very high", but they're "definitely heading in the right direction," said Whitty. Another 9,765 people in Britain have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,047,843, according to official figures released on Monday.

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