Good Morning Britain’s doctor has warned that Covid-19 is ‘not a cold’ after all restrictions are predicted to be scrapped later this month.
Boris Johnson will set out a strategy when parliament returns on February 21, which is likely to lift all restrictions including not requiring people to isolate if they have an active coronavirus infection.
However, concerns have been raised as to whether the lifting of all restrictions is to distract from the police investigation into the alleged parties at Downing Street rather than following the science and the impact of allowing people who have Covid-19 to mix freely with others.
Dr Amir Khan told Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard: ‘‘I think lots of us were surprised at how soon that’s happened, and it’s difficult to separate the political from the science here, because we haven’t heard from the likes of Chris Whitty or Professor Jonathan Van Tam and Sir Patrick Vallance as to what the science behind the change to these rules are, and I think that would be really helpful.
‘It does feel very soon and speaking to my colleagues in the NHS, there’s similar sentiments there. Last week, one in 19 people was testing positive for Covid-19.’
The doctor revealed that despite the Omicron variant of Covid-19 appearing to be less deadly overall, it is still not comparable to the common cold.