Boris Johnson has signalled that laws requiring people in England with Covid-19 to self-isolate will be lifted within weeks.
The Prime Minister said he will present his plan for “living with Covid” when Parliament returns from a short recess on February 21.
And he indicated that, as long as the data remains positive, the legal duty to self-isolate will be lifted a month earlier than planned.
At Prime Minister’s Questions he said: “It is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with Covid.
“Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions – including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive – a full month early.”
The PM’s press secretary has clarified that businesses would be given a “wide range of guidance” on how to treat employees following the removal of the Covid self-isolation requirement, adding that Downing Street would never recommend anyone go to work when they have an infectious disease.
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Asked if the change would mean people could go to work if they had Covid, the PM’s official spokesman said: “So there would be guidance, that would not be what we are recommending.
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“What we would simply be doing is removing the domestic regulations which relate to isolation.
“But obviously in the same way that someone with flu, we wouldn’t recommend they go to work, we would never recommend anyone goes to work when they have an infectious disease.”
He added: “We’ve talked about how we will need to manage living with coronavirus as we emerge from this pandemic. We are entering into that phase of endemicity as I’ve talked about, and it’s only right that we adjust according.”
There were 11,471 patients in hospital in England with Covid-19 on February 8, NHS figures show.
This is down 11% on the previous week but still higher than levels before Christmas.
However just 385 patients were in mechanical ventilator beds, the lowest number since last July.
Covid-19 cases in England currently average just under 64,000 a day, the lowest since mid-December, though this only includes people who have reported a positive test result and does not reflect the prevalence of the virus across the whole population.
Professor Peter Openshaw, who advises the Government on Covid through the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said he would be “very reluctant” to suggest this was the end of Covid, adding it was “still a very nasty virus”.