When will lockdown end?
Boris Johnson plunged England into its third lockdown in early January after a large rise in coronavirus infections and amid significant pressure on the NHS.
People are cooped up in their homes under the ‘stay-at-home’ order and are only allowed to leave for exercise once a day or travel for essential reasons, such as food shopping.
But the bleak New Year lockdown conditions have been tempered by a - so far - successful nationwide rollout out of the coronavirus vaccines, prompting the questions about when measures will be eased.
When will this lockdown end?
The restrictions were enshrined in law on January 6 and officially last until March 31, however in his address to MPs at the time Mr Johnson said the measures will be under “continuous review” with a statutory requirement every two weeks.
This means the first review taking place this week on Wednesday January 20, with a further review on Wednesday February 3.
At the time the PM gave a tentative mid-February date to leave the third lockdown and said he hoped to reopen schools after the half-term break.
However yesterday in an interview on Sky’s Ridge of Sunday Dominic Raab said that lockdown would not ease until March and that restrictions will be “phased out” in specific parts of the country.
And today vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi mirrored the Foreign Secretary’s comments and said that measures would not be eased until “two to three weeks after the middle of February.”
He told BBC Breakfast: "If we take the mid-February target, two weeks after that you get your protection, pretty much, for the Pfizer/BioNTech, three weeks for the Oxford/AstraZeneca, you are protected.
"One of the things we don't know yet, and the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam is on record as saying 'look give me a couple of months and I'll tell you', is the impact of the vaccine on transmission rates ie on infecting people.
"So there are a number of caveats that stand in the way of us reopening the economy.
"It will be gradually, it will be probably through the tiered system but you're looking at that sort of period, two to three weeks after the middle of February, after we've protected the top four cohorts."
So the most recent comments from ministers indicate we could see some easing of lockdown measures and a likely return to the tier system at the beginning of March.
Read More
Man scared of coronavirus lives undetected at airport for three months
Vaccinations to begin for over 70s and UK travel corridors close
