Matt Hancock outlines the four things that need to happen for lockdown to be lifted

The health secretary has said he thinks the current national lockdown will be the last, but that we need to meet certain criteria before it can be lifted.

Matt Hancock spoke to MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee this week, and when asked if he thought that due to the vaccines this would be the ‘last of the lockdowns’, he said ‘I do, yes.’

He also detailed four things that need to happen before the tough current restrictions can be lifted across England – which Boris Johnson has previously suggested would happen mid-February.

The four criteria are:

• There is no new coronavirus variant ‘causing difficulties’
• The vaccination programme is working
• The number of hospitalisations are coming down
• The number of deaths are also coming down

Mr Hancock told MPs, when suggesting a route out of lockdown: “We’ve set out the conditions that we’ll look at for the relaxation of the restrictions.

“Those are, that there isn’t another major, new variant that is causing difficulties.

“The vaccination program is working, and the number of hospitalisations and deaths is coming down.”

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He did, however, also say that there are no ‘fixed thresholds’ for these key criteria, before adding that people might need to be revaccinated in six months.

He told MPs: “There is absolutely no doubt that vaccines and testing will still be a feature next year.

“We will need both the surveillance testing to be able to understand where the virus is and we will need testing for people who have symptoms, in the same way that you get tested for all sorts of other things.”

Mr Hancock added: “I anticipate we will probably need to revaccinate because we don’t know the longevity of the protection from these vaccines.

“We don’t know how frequently it will be, but it might need to be every six months, it might need to be every year.”