Mandatory isolation for people with Covid-19 will be ended by the spring, Boris Johnson said, as he vowed the end of the pandemic was in sight.
Announcing that plan B measures would be dropped next week, the prime minister insisted that the government had “got the big things right” – and would plan for living with the virus without any restrictions.
From next week, face masks will no longer be compulsory after ministers opted to lift all restrictions, avoiding the need to ask rebellious MPs to vote on further restrictions.
Johnson said he would “trust the judgement of the British people” on wearing masks indoors, suggesting the management of coronavirus will become a matter of personal responsibility.
Guidance to work from home has been dropped, while vaccine certification for large events will be scrapped on 26 January.
Declaring that the worst of the Omicron wave had passed, Johnson said all remaining Covid-19 laws would soon be ditched.
“There will soon come a time when we can remove the legal requirement to self-isolate altogether, just as we don’t face legal obligations on people to isolate if they have flu,” he told MPs.
“As Covid becomes endemic we will need to replace legal requirements with advice and guidance, urging people with the virus to be careful and considerate of others”.
But medical experts cautioned that lifting restrictions would inevitably lead to a spike of infections – and cautioned that Johnson’s announcement had not sufficiently considered vulnerable people.
Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS Confederation of health bosses, told The Times: “A decision to lift restrictions is a trade-off. We will have greater freedoms but the cost — at least in the short term — will be that more people are likely to get sick with Covid, and that the health service will continue to have to deal with the extra burdens that this creates.”
Phillip Anderson, of the MS Society, added: “It’s appalling this announcement failed to mention people who are immunocompromised and less protected by vaccines, including some with MS.”
Meanwhile face masks will no longer be required in classrooms from today, a move teachers’ leaders warned was “premature”.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teachers’ union, told the PA news agency: “No-one wants face masks for any longer than they have to be on… teachers and pupils much prefer education without face masks.
“But I think this is premature – pupils have been back two weeks… Back in full-time education for about 10 days,” she added.
Dr Bousted said that at the moment infection levels in secondary schools were “not excessive” but were much higher in primary schools with one in 10 pupils infected. She added that primary pupils were not vaccinated and over half of secondary pupils were not vaccinated as well.
She said that if “we were going to have sensible policy-making” the government would have waited for attendance data released next week before lifting the restrictions.
“If you’re going to look for the greater or lesser evil, it is a much greater evil for pupils to have more school because they have caught Covid and they have to isolate than it is to wear a mask, so I think while we all want mask-wearing to be over when it is safe, this is premature.”
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