MEDICS in the UK say that the Prime Minister’s decision to relax Covid-19 rules in two weeks’ time is “incredibly concerning” and fails to protect people’s health.

The British Medical Association was responding to the announcement by Boris Johnson setting out the Government’s intention to relax nearly all of the covid measures on July 19, including the mandatory wearing of facemasks.

BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: “To listen to the Chief Medical Officer speak about the alarming rise in cases, doubling of hospitalisations and certainty of more deaths, and for the PM to decide to go full steam ahead with the easing of all mitigations regardless, is incredibly concerning. There is a clear disconnect with the actions the Government are planning to take and the data and views of the scientific community and medical profession.

“The NHS is already under immense pressure trying to cope with an unprecedented backlog of care. While admittedly the link between hospitalisations and deaths has weakened, it has not been broken and we now have twice as many people in hospital and on ventilators compared to a month ago. Even modest rises in patients being admitted to hospital will undermine our ability to treat the record five million patients waiting for treatment.

“Worryingly, approximately one in ten who people who contract the virus will have symptoms of long covid, with an estimated 2 million people having been ill for more than 12 weeks. This is having a frightening long-term impact on health and wellbeing, wrecking the lives of many. Why is the prime minister knowingly putting more people at risk of becoming ill when masks are proven to be effective and can reduce spread of infection? It will also impact on the economy and businesses if more staff become ill and unable to work.”

The BMA says there is also a contradiction between the emphasis on personal responsibility around mask wearing, and the fact that masks in the main are not for protecting the individual wearing them but those around them.

“This cannot be about ’personal choice’ when the risk comes from others around you not wearing a mask,” said Dr Magpaul.

“It is inconceivable that the Government would allow for people, many of whom have no choice but to get public transport or be in confined places, to have to take the risk of becoming ill, particularly those who have not been fully vaccinated or cannot take the vaccine for health reasons.

“We would urge the Government to reconsider its course of action.”