Professor Tim Spector, who runs the Zoe app Covid study at King’s College London, said relaxing coronavirus rules is a political statement intended to show that Britain is the first country moving out of the pandemic.
He told Times Radio: “This is more a political type of statement rather than a scientific one, and I think we have to really look at this in the context, both of politics and science, and also what’s happening, because there is some rationale to this and other countries are doing things similar, but it’s clearly a race for the Government to say that Britain is first, Britain is the first to come out of this, Britain has conquered Omicron, our booster programme is world beating etc, etc.
“But I think what they’re relying on is data that is highly disputed scientifically that, really, the UK has come out of this faster and better than anyone else.”
