People will be given “clear and strong guidance” about wearing masks even when the bulk of Covid rules are lifted across England, a health minister has said, rejecting criticism from a leading scientist that the public risked getting mixed messages on the issue.
The junior health minister Edward Argar stressed the robustness of guidance about mask use in public spaces, continuing the toughening of official language ahead of Boris Johnson’s announcement about reopening later on Monday.
In a Downing Street press conference expected at 5pm the prime minister is set to confirm that England will take the final step in reopening on 19 July, removing virtually all legal restrictions, despite fast-rising Covid infection rates.
Argar told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “When we move to step 4 we will see the falling away of legal obligations and legal restrictions towards personal and corporate responsibility, based on clear and strong guidance, and people will make their own judgments.”
In a later interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Argar said people would be given “clear guidance, unambiguous guidance” on continued mask use.
With charities representing people who are clinically vulnerable to Covid, or have suppressed immune systems, expressing alarm that a mass drop-off in mask use could effectively confine them to their homes, ministers have in recent days said new guidance would urge the public to still wear masks in crowded indoor places such as trains and shops.
But Prof Peter Openshaw, a lung immunology specialist at Imperial College London and a member of the government’s Nervtag (New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group), said there was a risk of mixed messages.
Asked on the Today programme if face coverings should be mandatory, he said: “I think it is very difficult to say that it is up to people to choose whether to wear face masks when it is not only protecting yourself but also protecting other people.
“It’s so much more straightforward to try to get face masks used in dangerous situations if there is some kind of compulsion behind it.”
Openshaw added: “I really don’t see why people are reluctant to wear face coverings, it is quite clear that they do greatly reduce transmission. Vaccines are fantastic but you have to give them time to work and in the meantime keeping up all those measures which we have learned to reduce the transmission is to me really vital.”
02:38How your mask protects other people – video explainer
His comments were echoed by Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), who said there had been mixed messaging over face masks.
He told BBC Breakfast that “some ministers have come out and said they’ll be very happy not to wear their face masks and then we’ve had others, even in the last couple of days, saying ‘we would still advise you to wear them in these settings’.
“I think it’s quite confusing actually for people to know what the right thing to do is. I think all that we can do is take a sort of appropriate approach where we look at the situation and sort of weigh up the risk ourselves, and I hope that enough people do that going forward that we don’t see a big surge.”
Asked about Openshaw’s comments, Argar argued the public would not be confused about masks.
He said: “I don’t think that the British people will struggle to look at the guidance and form their own commonsense judgments. I don’t think it will introduce confusion.”
Ministerial language on masks has notably changed in recent days. Just over a week ago, Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, said he would abandon mask use, while the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said he would not necessarily wear one even if it was recommended, for example by a train company, if the carriage he was travelling in was quiet.
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In contrast, Argar said he “probably would” wear a mask on an empty train if this was required by the train operator.
Argar told Today that with the advent of school holidays in England, summer weather and the extent of vaccination rates, it was the right time to reopen.
“I think we have to be clear about this, that if not now, when?” he said. “We want to see these restrictions relaxed. Yes, we’re seeing the infection rates go up, and hospitalisations and death rates will go up, but there is nowhere near that direct and strong correlation there was, say, back in January when we had equivalent levels of infection rates.”
