Johnson said on Sunday he did not want people to “throw caution to the wind” and there was no case for complacency, but the vaccine rollout meant the government wanted to move from mandates to encouraging personal responsibility.
Among adults, 81 per cent have been boosted in England.
“Today will mark a moment of pride after one of the most difficult periods in our country’s history as we begin to learn to live with COVID,” he said in a statement ahead of Monday’s announcement to parliament.
Britain’s toll of morxjmtzywe than 160,000 fatalities within 28 days of infection is the second-highest in Europe after Russia’s, and it reported an average of around 43,000 cases and 144 deaths a day in the past week.
Medical leaders have urged Johnson not to be “gung-ho” with the nation’s health, and government advisers have said dropping restrictions could lead to rapid epidemic growth as people change their behaviour more swiftly than at previous times in the pandemic.
So far the government has sought to keep the economy open by combining mass rapid testing with a legal requirement for five days of self-isolation, an approach that enabled the country to navigate the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
The government said it would retain some surveillance systems and plans for contingency measures if a new variant appears, after British scientists detected earlier variants.
