England takes major step out of COVID lockdown; PM urges caution

Shops, pub gardens and salons reopen, moves underpinned by a swift vaccination effort that has seen 60 percent of adults receive a dose.

Shops, gyms, hairdressers and pub gardens reopened in England after being shuttered for months as part of a nationwide lockdown to suppress a surge in coronavirus infections. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the latest relaxation on Monday of the most onerous restrictions in the United Kingdom’s peacetime history was a “major step” towards freedom, as he urged people to behave responsibly with COVID-19 still a threat despite a rapid mass vaccination programme. The lockdown was enforced in England on January 6 in response to rising infection rates due to the spread of a more transmissible variant of coronavirus first identified in the southeastern county of Kent late last year.