LOCKDOWN --- HAVE WE GONE TO FAR ???

Cabinet ministers admit there is no lockdown exit plan as they wait for Boris Johnson's return

Ministers have admitted they do not have an agreed strategy for ending the coronavirus lockdown as they wait for Boris Johnson to return to work and take charge of the policy.

Government sources have told The Daily Telegraph that the exit strategy is still at the “modelling” stage and there is not a document “sitting on a shelf ” waiting to be put into action.

One insider said there was “no exit plan at the moment because ... there can be no exit strategy until Boris is back in business”.

UK not thinking of lifting restrictions yet - Gove

Michael Gove has said that reports the UK is looking to gradually lift some lockdown restrictions, such as re-opening schools and allowing some small social gatherings, are "not correct".

"It would be wrong to get ahead of ourselves here," the senior minister told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, insisting the country must maintain the current measures until death rates begin to fall.

He said the facts and advice were "clear" that we should not be lifting the restrictions yet.

Analysis: When is it right to lift a lockdown?

Michelle Roberts

Health editor, BBC News online

Many countries are taking tentative steps to ease lockdown restrictions, despite still seeing more daily infections and deaths than when the measures were introduced.

If that sounds risky, it is. Go too soon and too fast and you could get a massive resurgence of coronavirus - the “second wave” that experts fear. But keeping businesses closed and people shut in their homes for many months is harmful to the economy and society. Judging the right time to lift measures, and which ones, is an educated guess. There is no precedent.

The countries that go first - such as China, where the pandemic began - will be the test bed for others to learn from. For that, you need reliable data on how many people are becoming infected, where and how.

Even with good data and lots of testing and tracing, there is a lag between what you record and what is happening on the ground. The infection takes days to cause symptoms and weeks to cause hospitalisations, which makes it hard to identify and stop new outbreaks. Some people are silent carriers and spreaders of the virus.

Eliminating the threat of coronavirus without social distancing isn’t possible yet, particularly with no vaccine available. Planning exit strategies is a delicate balancing act for every nation involved. And even though many are hoping for a return to normality, life after lockdown will not be business as usual.