Matt Hancock Advises Caution With Exiting Lockdown

MATT HANCOCK advises caution with exiting lockdown ahead of the Prime Minister’s big announcement

The UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned that the government will maintain a cautious approach to easing the country out of lockdown and will take its time in gradually lifting the current restrictions. Mr Hancock spoke with Sky’s Ridge on Sunday morning, February 21 ahead of the Prime minister’s long-awaited announcement on his ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown, expected to be unveiled at 7pm tomorrow (Monday).

‘It is right to be cautious, it is incredibly important. There are still almost 20,000 people in the hospital with Covid right now. Almost 20,000,’ the Health Secretary said.

‘The vaccination programme whilst clearly going very well, will take time to be able to reach all people who have significant vulnerability, especially because we also need to get the second jab to everybody.

‘So we have got time that needs to be taken to get this right, the PM will set out the roadmap tomorrow and he will set out the full details, taking into account that we need to take a cautious but irreversible approach, that’s the goal.’

The government has promised on numerous occasions to take a ‘cautious and phased’ approach to the lockdown exit, with schools expected to reopen on March 8 and pubs thought to get the green light by May.

‘We have set out very clearly that getting schools back is the top priority amongst all the different things that we want to do to get life back to normal,’ Matt Hancock told Sky.

Mr Hancock went on: ‘Whilst we want to set out a road map which gives people guidance in terms of how we think we will be able to do this, we also absolutely will be vigilant to the data on the way.

‘We have seen throughout this pandemic that there have been moments when things haven’t got as we expected – for instance, when the new variant was first discovered in Kent.’

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