UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is said to target easing virus restrictions by Good Friday i.e. 2 April to allow families some small contact again
Times Radio's chief political commentator, Tom Newton Dunn, tweets:
Will Easter be the new Xmas, albeit a thin one? This is the PM's new hope, I'm told. He has privately shared an aspiration to see restrictions begin to ease by Good Friday (April 2), to allow families some small contact again. But there is tension with Chris Whitty though it is weeks away yet, but ministers have begun to put together a plan for the unlock. The CMO is adamant any end to the lockdown must be 1. conditions dependent (deaths down, pressure off the NHS etc), and 2. very careful and in slow degrees with pauses to test them. That means no dates stated, and no promise of Easter offered. This tension emerged briefly during last Friday's press conference when Whitty and Johnson clashed briefly in public over the definition of 'Spring' - is it pre or post Easter.
The full tweet thread here. While this isn't quite set in stone and there's still many more weeks to debate on this, with the UK set to review the current set of restrictions in mid-February first, it does shed some light into things behind-the-scenes at No. 10.
What a mess, really.
