<p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Delaying the easing of coronavirus restrictions in England beyond June 21 could hamper the economic recovery, a pub chain boss warned.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Chief Executive of the Shepherd Neame brewery and pub company Jonathan Neame said a week would leave a ‘marginal impact’ but five weeks would be a ‘real damper’.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>He warned recovery is ‘happening quite fast at this moment in time’ and said any continued lockdown ‘will really undermine consumer and business confidence’.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>It comes as experts continue to debate the pros and cons for the country of opening up further on June 21.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Professor Sir Tim Gowers, whose argument against herd immunity helped trigger England’s first lockdown, warned caution is needed.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Professor Christina Pagel, a member of Independent Safe from University College London, agreed, saying reopening should be delayed a few more months.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>But Nervtag member Robert Dingwall said it was ‘hard to see any reason’ why June 21 could not go ahead.</p><div class=”artSplitter mol-img-group” style=”style”> <div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div> <p class=”imageCaption”>Chief Executive of the Shepherd Neame brewery and pub company Jonathan Neame (pictured) said a week would leave a ‘marginal impact’ but five weeks would be a ‘real damper'</p></div><div class=”artSplitter mol-img-group” style=”style”> <div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div> <p class=”imageCaption”>He warned recovery is ‘happening quite fast at this moment in time’ and said any continued lockdown ‘will really undermine consumer and business confidence’.

Pictured: A pub in Scotland last week</p></div><div class=”mol-img-group mol-hidden-caption artSplitter” style=”style”> <div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div> <div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><p class=”imageCaption”></p></div><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Mr Neame told the Today programme: ‘If it’s delayed for, say, seven days but there’s still a certain outcome the restrictions will be lifted in full after that, then that will be a marginal impact.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’If, on the other hand, we’re going into a cycle of a further five weeks of data review and uncertainty and more reviews at that time, then I think that will put a real damper on the recovery which is happening quite fast at this moment in time, and will really undermine consumer and business confidence.'</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Meanwhile experts debate whether reopening the country completely on June 21 is a good idea.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Prof Sir Tim, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, told the Guardian the downside of being ‘a bit more cautious’ was a lot smaller than the downside of getting it wrong.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Asked about the next step in lockdown easing in England, due on June 21, Prof Gowers said he did not believe the plans were necessarily at risk, but urged caution.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’Because Boris Johnson has made a big thing about all the steps being irreversible, I think he’s put himself in a position where once he takes a step, he’ll be extremely reluctant to reverse because that would be a big U-turn, an embarrassing climbdown,’ he said.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’So I think if that’s the way you’re going to play things, then you should be very, very cautious about every step you take …

And maybe everything [will] be OK, maybe the number of people who are vaccinated will be just enough … ‘R’ will broadly speaking stay below one even with Indian variants.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’But if it’s not OK, we know, because of mathematics, that things will get bad very, very quickly.
Or at least, maybe it won’t look that quick to start with, but it’ll grow exponentially.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’So it’ll pick up speed and become a big problem.'</p><div class=”mol-img-group mol-hidden-caption artSplitter” style=”style”> <div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div> <div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><p class=”imageCaption”></p></div><div class=”mol-img-group artSplitter” style=”style”> <div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div> <div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><div><div> <span></span> <div></div></div></div><p class=”imageCaption”>It comes as Britain on Friday recorded more than 4,000 daily cases for the first time since April, while there were 10 deaths</p></div><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>The Guardian said Prof Gowers sent the PM’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings a five-page document warning of the need to ‘move urgently to extreme containment measures’ in March last year.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Other experts on Friday argued restrictions should remain in place until more of the population had received both vaccine doses.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Professor Christina Pagel, a member of Independent Safe from University College London, said reopening should be delayed a few more months.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>But Prof Dingwall, from Nottingham Trent University, told Times Radio it was ‘hard to see any reason’ why June 21 could not go ahead, adding that those who currently catching Covid tended to be younger and would get less sick.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>Asked whether hospital admissions could get out of hand, leading to local lockdowns, he said: ‘I think we’ve got to look quite carefully at what hospitalisation means.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’The anecdotes that the clinicians are coming up with is to say these are not really, really sick people like they were seeing in January, so more people who just need a little bit of extra help with breathing, they come in, they get oxygen and dexamethasone for maybe three or four days, and then they go home again.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>’And in that sense I think hospitalisations may not be a very good indicator of the severity of these infections.'</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>He said there was a need to ‘break this link in our minds between ‘this is very transmissible, this spreads very easily’..

and ‘this is as dangerous as things were when the Wuhan virus first hit last spring”.</p><div class=”moduleFull mol-video”><div><div itemprop=”video” itemscope=”itemscope” website content=”Proposed lifting of restrictions on 21st June in England is in doubt” itemprop=”name” /><meta content=”PT02M13S” itemprop=”duration” /><meta website itemprop=”thumbnailUrl” /><meta website itemprop=”contentURL” /><meta content=”2021-05-28T18:31:19+0100″ itemprop=”uploadDate” /><meta content=”576″ itemprop=”height” /><meta content=”1024″ itemprop=”width” /><meta content=”Ministers are working to scrap social distancing but keep face masks and work from home guidance in place after the June 21 ‘Freedom Day’ amid concerns over the spread of the Indian variant.” itemprop=”description” /><div class=”item”> <div class=”vjs-video-container vjs-fixed vjs-span-two-col news” id=”v-3681107038964004329″> <video controls=”” class=”video-js vjs-default-skin” website lifting of restrictions on 21st June in England is in website are working to scrap social distancing but keep face masks and work from home guidance in place after the June 21 ‘Freedom Day’ amid concerns over the spread of the Indian variant.website preload=”none”> <source website type=”video/mp4″></source> </video> </div> </div> </div></div></div><div class=”mol-img-group artSplitter” style=”style”><div class=”splitLeft”><div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div></div><div class=”splitRight”><div class=”mol-img”> <div class=”image-wrap”> </div> <noscript> </noscript> </div></div><div class=”clear”></div><p class=”imageCaption”>The map shows the following areas in darkest orange, marking the highest likelihood of them becoming a hotspot: (left) Kirklees, Burnley, Rossendale, Blackburn, Bury, Manchester and Bolton; (right) Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Clackmannanshire and Midlothian</p></div><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>The PM told reporters on Thursday he ‘didn’t see anything currently in the data’ to divert from the June reopening target before adding: ‘But we may need to wait.'</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>The Times reported face coverings and work from home guidance may remain in place after June 21, when all legal limits on social contact are due to be lifted in England.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>It said ministers were increasingly concerned the spread of the Indian variant could undermine the easing of restrictions and were drawing up plans that could lead to a partial end of lockdown.</p><p class=”mol-para-with-font”>But the paper added the Treasury was prioritising the removal of the ‘one-metre plus’ and ‘rule of six indoors’ measures in order to help the economy recover.</p><div><div data-track-module=”am-related_carousel^related_carousel” data-track-selector=”.rotator-panels a:not([class*=external])” data-dm-rotator-rotate=”false” data-track-pos=”static” data-preferred-shared-network-enabled=”” data-dm-rotator-auto-init=”” id=”p-33″ class=”related-carousel with-fb-or-tw news half” data-dm-rotator-active-class=”active” data-dm-rotator-page-count=”1.0″ data-dm-social-article-auto-init=”” data-dm-rotator-page-size=”1″> <div class=”rotator bdrcc”> <div class=”rotator-title”> <h2>RELATED ARTICLES</h2> <ul class=”rotator-pages link-xocc”> <li class=”rotator-prev”>Previous