Changes to Covid restrictions from Thursday

Domestic legal restrictions will end on 24 February, the Prime Minister has confirmed, as he set out the government’s plans to live with and manage the virus.

From Thursday, the UK will begin to treat Covid like any other infectious disease, such as flu, and the remaining domestic restrictions in England will be removed.

The legal requirement to self-isolate will end although adults and children who test positive are still advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for at least five full days and then continue to follow the guidance until they have received two negative test results on consecutive days.

Self-isolation support payments, national funding for practical support and the medicine delivery service will no longer be available, and routine contact tracing will end, including venue check-ins on the NHS Covid-19 app.

From Thursday, fully vaccinated adults and those aged under 18 who are close contacts are no longer advised to test daily for seven days and the legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate will be removed.

The government will also remove the Covid-19 provisions within the Statutory Sick Pay and Employment and Support Allowance regulations on 24 March.

From April, the government will update guidance setting out the ongoing steps that people with Covid-19 should take to be careful and considerate of others, similar to advice on other infectious diseases. 

Universal free provision of tests will also end in April as the government will end free symptomatic and asymptomatic testing for the general public.

Limited symptomatic testing will be available for a small number of at-risk groups and further details on which groups will be eligible will be set out shortly. Free symptomatic testing will also remain available to social care staff.

The government is working with retailers so that everyone who wants to can buy a test.

From April, the government will also remove the current guidance on voluntary Covid-status certification in domestic settings and no longer recommend that certain venues use the NHS Covid Pass, and remove the health and safety requirement for every employer to explicitly consider Covid-19 in their risk assessments.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday evening (21 February), Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "In England, we will remove all remaining domestic restrictions in law.

"From this Thursday, it will no longer be law to self-isolate if you test positive, and so we will also end the provision of self-isolation support payments, although Statutory Sick Pay can still be claimed for a further month.

"Until 1 April, we will still advise you to stay at home if you test positive.

"But after that, we will encourage people with Covid symptoms to exercise personal responsibility, just as we encourage people who may have flu to be considerate towards others.

"It is only because levels of immunity are so high and deaths are now, if anything, below where you would normally expect for this time of year that we can lift these restrictions.

"And it is only because we know Omicron is less severe, that testing for Omicron on the colossal scale we have been doing is now much less valuable in preventing serious illness.

"We should be proud that the UK established the biggest testing programme per person of any large country in the world.

"But its budget in the last financial year was bigger than the Home Office - and it cost – the testing programme cost - £2 billion just last month alone.

"So we must scale back and prioritise our resources for the most vulnerable.

"We should be clear the pandemic is not over and there may be significant resurgence.

"Our scientists are certain there will be new variants and it’s very possible that those will be worse than Omicron.

"So we will continue to protect the most vulnerable with targeted vaccinations and treatments and we have bought enough doses of vaccine to anticipate a wide range of possible JCVI recommendations.

"This includes a new Spring booster, which will be offered to those aged 75 and over, older care home residents, and those over 12 who are immunosuppressed.

"We will also retain disease surveillance systems and contingency measures which can ensure our resilience in the face of future waves or new variants.

"And we will build on the innovations that defined the very best of our response to the pandemic, including continuing the work of the Vaccines Task Force, which has already secured contracts with manufacturers trialling new vaccines which could provide protection against new variants.

"Today is not the day we can declare victory over Covid, because this virus is not going away.

"But it is the day when all the efforts of the last two years finally enabled us to protect ourselves while restoring our liberties in full.

"And after two of the darkest grimmest years in our peacetime history, I do believe this is a moment of pride for our nation and a source of hope for all that we can achieve in the years to come.