Boris Johnson is set to make an announcement on his plans for 'living with Covid' today.
The prime minister is expected to announce that the legal requirement to self-isolate in England will be scrapped and that the provision of free lateral flow tests will be coming to an end.
Mr Johnson is meeting with his Cabinet today, and will then outline his plans to MPs in the House of Commons this afternoon.
Following a week-long recess Parliament will be sitting again from 2.30pm today.
Cabinet ministers were expected to meet this morning to discuss the plans and have them signed off, but the meeting was delayed at the last minute.
The delay to the Cabinet meeting was thought to centre on a request from health secretary Sajid Javid regarding how elements of the “living with Covid” plan will be funded, but a No 10 spokesperson refused to comment on the nature of the delay.
No 10 said the meeting will now be held via a call this afternoon rather than in-person “because of expedience”.
Mr Johnson's statement in the Commons is then expected at around 4.30pm, although the timings could change.
A press conference from Downing Street is also expected this evening, No 10 has said, but a time has not yet been confirmed.
Mr Johnson will be joined by the chief medical officer for England, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
Press conferences usually take place at 5pm, but because of the late start in the House of Commons it is likely to be later in the evening.
Downing Street said the vaccination programme had left England in a “strong position to consider lifting the remaining legal restrictions”, with more than 81 per cent of adults having received a booster dose, and Covid cases continuing to fall.
Speaking to Sky News this morning, business minister Paul Scully said it was important to make changes to coronavirus rules “to allow the economy to recover, to allow people to get back to a sense of normality, whilst keeping people safe”.
Mr Scully said: “Infections are coming down quite rapidly, the hospitalisations and deaths are following as well – they tend to lag behind, obviously, the case numbers – but nonetheless you can see the trend within that.”
Mr Scully said Mr Johnson will be “looking at the best advice possible but getting the balance right”.
He said businesses will be liable to pay for their testing regime if they want to continue checking whether their employees have coronavirus.
"We don’t test for flu, we don’t test for other diseases, and if the variants continue to be as mild as Omicron then there’s a question mark as to whether people will go through that regular testing anyway," he said.
He added that the government was concerned about the most vulnerable but “we’re not going to be having a testing regime for the next 50 years”.
Some health experts have been critical of the decision to abandon the requirement to quarantine after a positive result and bring an end to free testing.
According to the Mail On Sunday, the self-isolation requirement will be lifted as soon as Thursday this week.
Chair of the Council of the British Medical Association Dr Chaand Nagpaul called it an “odd decision to make” when there are “more people dying, more people in the hospital” than before Plan B measures were introduced last year in response to the pre-Christmas rising tide of Omicron cases.
As of Sunday, UK government data shows that 11,555 people are in hospital with the illness, with 331 of those in ventilation beds.
Mr Johnson said the latest data meant it was time for the UK to shift the balance away from “state mandation” and towards “personal responsibility”.
The 'living with Covid' strategy is also expected to include changes to travel restrictions, including the scrapping of the passenger locator form later this year.
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