Lockdown easing has turned into a trade-off between lives and livelihoods

Editorial: Boris Johnson must ensure maximum caution on further moves to ease restrictions until the impact of Monday’s changes has been fully assessed

People enjoy the sunshine on the beach at Southend-on-Sea in Essex over the weekend (EPA)

The UK is undoubtedly at a “very dangerous moment” in the coronavirus pandemic, as Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, put it. Although some lockdown restrictions are being eased today, several members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have expressed doubts because the number of new coronavirus infections remains at 8,000 a day.

They are right to be worried; the number of new infections is higher than when the lockdown was imposed in March. The government insists its test and trace scheme, rushed out four days earlier than planned to distract attention from the Dominic Cummings affair, can cope with 10,000 new cases a day. But it remains to be seen whether the programme will measure up to the scale of the complex task. Alarmingly, it will not be fully up and running until the end of June.

Dominic Raab, the cabinet minister sent out to bat on the Sunday television shows, lacked much personal protective equipment. He hailed as “steady progress” the 800 fewer new cases, 200 fewer people in critical care and 27 fewer deaths last week than in the previous one. But it is not as “steady” as ministers hoped. They had intended to announce by now that the country had moved from level four (“transmission is high or rising exponentially”) to level three (a general epidemic allowing a “gradual relaxing of restrictions and social distancing measures”). That would have provided some cover for the changes, but for now ministers can merely repeat unconvincingly that such a “transition” is underway.