Cabinet Ministers shelve plans for vaccine passports and agree it’s time to ‘live with Covid’

Cabinet Ministers shelve plans for vaccine passports and agree it’s time to ‘live with Covid’.

Cabinet ministers are set to shelve plans for the use of vaccine passports. This means that it will not be compulsory to show or carry a covid passport to gain entry to music festivals, sports events or other mass gatherings when lockdown restrictions are lifted next month.

The mandatory use of ‘Covid certification’ will end after Freedom Day on July 19. Plans for pubs and restaurants had already been scrapped following a massive backlash from MPs and the hospitality sector.

The decision to shelve the passports comes amid growing confidence that Boris Johnson will press ahead with plans to lift social distancing rules next month despite a surge in Covid cases.

The PM told the Cabinet yesterday that our vaccination success means Britain will be able to ‘live with Covid’ because the link between virus cases and hospitalisations has been broken.

Yesterday saw another 20,479 cases of covid reported in the UK – with the seven-day total up 70 per cent in a week – but one government source said Freedom Day would go ahead as planned even if cases are more than twice as high as they are now.

‘We need to get used to the idea of treating Covid more like flu,’ the source said. ‘People have the flu vaccine, which helps reduce serious illness, but we still get large numbers of cases and significant numbers of deaths. When we get to July 19, cases look like they will be potentially very high, perhaps as many as 30,000 or 40,000 per day. But that is not in itself a reason not to go ahead, provided hospitalisations and deaths remain at relatively low levels.’

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, please remember to come back and check The Euro Weekly News website for all your up-to-date local and international news stories.