Britain yesterday partially reopened schools and allowed the most vulnerable people to venture outdoors, despite warnings that it is moving too quickly out of its COVID-19 lockdown.
The mood is clearly improving as the number of daily deaths drops. Parks and beaches have been filled for two successive weekends in what has been one of the driest springs in more than 100 years.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a timeline that allowed 2 million children to return to school yesterday and more on June 15.
Photo: Reuters
However, a survey conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that school leaders expect 47 percent of families to keep their children home.
The British government is also allowing those most at risk of serious consequences from the virus to spend time outdoors for the first time in two months.
“I do not underestimate just how difficult it has been for you,” Johnson told the 2.2 million Britons who fall into the “extreme risk” category.
The government has also been encouraged by the positive experience of other European countries that have started to return to something resembling normal life.
However, critics argue that the so-called R rate of transmission — estimated nationally at between 0.7 and 0.9 — was still dangerously close to the 1.0 figure above which the virus’ spread grows.
The R rate estimates the number of people one infected person passes the virus to.
Several members of the government’s scientific advisory group have warned that restrictions were being lifted prematurely.
“COVID-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England,” scientific adviser Jeremy Farrar wrote on Twitter.
British Secretary of State for International Development Alok Sharma yesterday told the BBC that the “scientific advice does differ,” but that the overall view from the official body advising the government was that “we must do this cautiously.”
“These are very cautious steps we are taking,” Sharma said.
The scientists are not the only ones to express concern.
National Education Union leader Mary Bousted said that the government has had to revise its school reopening guidance 41 times since the middle of last month.
There were “things they had forgotten, things they didn’t know, and things they got wrong [and that] had to be added in,” Bousted told Sky News.
The schools started reopening in England because each of Britain’s four nations follows its own health guidelines.
Scotland is waiting until August and Northern Ireland is eyeing September, while Wales is still making up its mind.
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