CHRIS Whitty has revealed three situations that people should still be wearing a mask after the rules change on July 19th.
Boris Johnson today confirmed that all but a handful of Covid rules will be torn up on Freedom Day.
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After months of Covid rules it was confirmed that lockdown will be stripped back to the bare bones of requiring people to self-isolate if they test positive or are contacted by test and trace.
All other legal limits will be ripped up on Freedom Day for a summer of fun after a gruelling year and a half of draconian measures.
The PM outlined a five-point plan to continue grappling with the virus without lockdown.
His blueprint will see ministers double down on the vaccine rollout, encourage people to make smart choices, toughen border controls, maintain quarantine and keep a close eye on the data.
Professor Whitty has confirmed that he will continue to wear a face covering while in a crowded situation indoors, when required to by an authority and if someone was uncomfortable with him not wearing a mask – as a point of “common courtesy”.
He said: “I would wear a mask under three situations, and I would do so, particularly at this point when the epidemic is clearly significant and rising.
“And the first is in any situation which was indoors and crowded, or indoors with close proximity to other people and that is because masks help protect other people – this is a thing we do to protect other people, this is by far its principal aim.
“The second situation I’d do it is if I was required to by any competent authority. I would have no hesitation about doing that and I would consider that was a reasonable and sensible thing if they had good reason to do that.
“And the third reason is if someone else was uncomfortable if I did not wear a mask, as a point of common courtesy of course I would wear a mask so under all those circumstances I would do so.”
Sir Patrick Vallance echoed Prof Whitty’s comments and confirmed that he would be acting in exactly the same way.
He said the “obvious place where mask-wearing becomes an advantage” is in indoor crowded spaces, the situation in which he said someone is most likely to catch the virus.
While wearing masks will no longer be mandatory on public transport or in shops Boris has asked Brits to “exercise judgement” about when to still use them.
Asked at today’s press conference to specify circumstances in which wearing a mask would still be recommended, the PM said it would depend on the context.
Using public transport as an example, he said there was a big difference between sitting on a packed Tube train and an almost empty carriage at night.
A final decision on whether to press ahead with lockdown lifting in two weeks will be made on July 12, but the PM said he expects to go ahead with it as planned.
He is confident Britain’s well-oiled vaccine rollout will allow ministers to swap “Government diktats” with the public’s “individual judgement”.
Today he unveiled his post-lockdown blueprint to give anxious businesses time to prepare for the grand reopening later this month.
But he warned that “the pandemic is far from over” and “we must reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths from Covid”.
