By JILL LAW­LESS | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

LON­DON (AP) — British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son said Mon­day that he is scrap­ping the last do­mes­tic coro­n­avirus re­stric­tions in Eng­land, in­clud­ing the re­quire­ment for peo­ple with COVID-19 to self-iso­late, even as he ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial for new and more dead­ly vari­ants of the virus.

John­son told law­mak­ers in the House of Com­mons that the coun­try was “mov­ing from gov­ern­ment re­stric­tions to per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty” as part of a plan for treat­ing COVID-19 like oth­er trans­mis­si­ble ill­ness­es such as flu.

“We now have suf­fi­cient lev­els of im­mu­ni­ty to com­plete the tran­si­tion from pro­tect­ing peo­ple with gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tions to re­ly­ing on vac­cines and treat­ments as our first line of de­fense,” John­son said.

John­son con­firmed that manda­to­ry self-iso­la­tion for peo­ple with COVID-19 will end start­ing Thurs­day, and the rou­tine trac­ing of in­fect­ed peo­ple’s con­tacts will stop.

Peo­ple will still be ad­vised to stay home if they are sick — but will no longer get ex­tra fi­nan­cial sup­port in­tro­duced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for those who miss work.

Many peo­ple who think they have COVID-19 may nev­er know for sure. Start­ing April 1, lab-con­firmed PCR tests for the virus will be avail­able free on­ly to old­er peo­ple and the im­mune-com­pro­mised. The gov­ern­ment will al­so stop of­fer­ing the pub­lic free rapid virus tests, though they will be avail­able pri­vate­ly for a price, as is al­ready the case in many coun­tries.

Yet the gov­ern­ment stressed that the pan­dem­ic isn’t over and the virus could still spring nasty sur­pris­es.

John­son said sci­en­tists were “cer­tain there will be new vari­ants and it is very pos­si­ble they will be worse than omi­cron,” the cur­rent­ly dom­i­nant strain.

John­son said the fact that that Queen Eliz­a­beth II test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on Sun­day was “a re­minder that this virus has not gone away.”

Buck­ing­ham Palace said the 95-year-old monarch was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing mild, cold-like symp­toms, was con­tin­u­ing with light du­ties and would fol­low all gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions.

The gov­ern­ment plan fore­sees vac­cines and treat­ments keep­ing the virus in check. Every­one 75 and old­er will be of­fered a fourth vac­cine dose, along with those 12 and up who have con­di­tions that make them vul­ner­a­ble to se­vere dis­ease. The gov­ern­ment said it will ac­cept rec­om­men­da­tions from its vac­cine ad­vi­so­ry group on whether fourth shots should be of­fered more wide­ly.

“We don’t need laws to com­pel peo­ple to be con­sid­er­ate to oth­ers ... So let us learn to live with this virus and con­tin­ue pro­tect­ing our­selves and oth­ers with­out re­strict­ing our free­doms,” John­son said.

The leader of the op­po­si­tion Labour Par­ty, Keir Starmer, said the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach would leave Britain vul­ner­a­ble.

“’Ig­no­rance is bliss’ is not a re­spon­si­ble ap­proach to a dead­ly virus,” Starmer said.

Some sci­en­tists al­so said re­mov­ing all re­stric­tions was a risky move that could bring a surge in in­fec­tions and weak­en the coun­try’s de­fens­es against more vir­u­lent fu­ture strains.

An­drew Pol­lard, di­rec­tor of the Ox­ford Vac­cine Group, which de­vel­oped the As­traZeneca vac­cine, said it was es­sen­tial to main­tain “sur­veil­lance for the virus, an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem if you like, which tells us about new vari­ants emerg­ing and gives an abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor whether those new vari­ants are in­deed caus­ing more se­vere dis­ease than omi­cron did.”

The gov­ern­ment said it would re­tain a strong sur­veil­lance sys­tem, in­clud­ing the In­fec­tion Sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Of­fice for Na­tion­al Sta­tis­tics, which is con­sid­ered in­valu­able be­cause it tests peo­ple whether or not they have symp­toms. It said it al­so will keep the abil­i­ty to ramp up test­ing if need­ed.

John­son’s Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment lift­ed most virus re­stric­tions in Jan­u­ary, scrap­ping vac­cine pass­ports for venues and end­ing mask man­dates in most set­tings apart from hos­pi­tals in Eng­land.

Scot­land, Wales and North­ern Ire­land, which set their own pub­lic health rules, al­so have opened up, al­though more slow­ly.

Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment ap­plies on­ly to Eng­land, which is home to 56 mil­lion of the U.K.’s 67 mil­lion peo­ple. It leaves Eng­land with few­er re­stric­tions than most oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, with the ex­cep­tion of Den­mark.

A com­bi­na­tion of high vac­ci­na­tion rates in the U.K. and the milder omi­cron vari­ant meant that eas­ing re­stric­tions last month didn’t lead to a surge in hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths. Both are falling, though the U.K. still has Eu­rope’s high­est coro­n­avirus toll af­ter Rus­sia, with more than 160,000 record­ed deaths.

In Britain, 85% of peo­ple age 12 and up have had two vac­cine dos­es and al­most two-thirds have had a third boost­er shot.

Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment was cheered by many Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty law­mak­ers, who ar­gue that the re­stric­tions were in­ef­fi­cient and dis­pro­por­tion­ate. It could shore up John­son’s po­si­tion among par­ty law­mak­ers, who have been mulling an at­tempt to oust him over scan­dals in­clud­ing lock­down-breach­ing gov­ern­ment par­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Health psy­chol­o­gist Robert West, a mem­ber of a gov­ern­ment ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee, said the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment was ab­di­cat­ing its “re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for look­ing af­ter its pop­u­la­tion.”

“It looks as though what the gov­ern­ment has said is that it ac­cepts that the coun­try is go­ing to have to live with some­where be­tween 20,000 and 80,000 COVID deaths a year and isn’t re­al­ly go­ing to do any­thing about it,” he said, speak­ing in a per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty. “Now that seems to me to be ir­re­spon­si­ble.”