Boris Johnson’s route back to normal life is contained in a 56-page Covid-19 winter plan published yesterday. The blueprint is guided by three main objectives. They are to bring the R number below 1 “and keep it there on a sustained basis”, to “find new and more effective ways of managing the virus” through vaccines and new treatments and to “minimise damage to the economy [and] education”. The “programme for suppressing the virus, protecting the NHS and the vulnerable and providing a route back to normality” rests heavily on a reworked, simplified regional approach to social distancing restrictions, supported by mass testing. Officials hope that with all the lessons of the past this version will be a stable, durable system that will last through the

Source: The Times November 23, 2020 17:03 UTC