LONDON—Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “freedom day” ending over a year of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in England was marred on Monday by warnings of supermarket shortages and his own forced self-isolation.
Johnson’s bet that he can get one of Europe’s largest economies firing again because so many people are now vaccinated marks a new chapter in the global response to the coronavirus.
If the vaccines prove effective in reducing severe illness and deaths, Johnson’s decision could offer a path out of the worst public health crisis in decades.
But Johnson’s big day was marred by “pingdemic chaos” as a National Health Service app ordered hundreds of thousands of people to self-isolate—prompting warnings supermarket shelves could soon be emptied.
“If we don’t do it now we’ve got to ask ourselves, when will we ever do it?” Johnson said just hours after he was forced to abandon a plan to dodge the 10-day quarantine requirement for himself and finance minister Rishi Sunak.
“This is the right moment but we’ve got to do it cautiously. We’ve got to remember that this virus is sadly still out there.”
But, outstripping European peers, 87 percent of Britain’s adult population has had one vaccination dose, and more than 68 percent have had the two doses that reportedly provide fuller protection. – READ MORE
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