"Dangerous and unethical experiment": England drops restrictions despite surging COVID infections

London — Amid a massive surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, the U.K. government dropped virtually all of its remaining coronavirus restrictions for England on Monday, declaring July 19 "Freedom Day." But as nightclubs and movie theaters reopened to full-capacity crowds, thousands of people, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, were forced to self-isolate due to possible exposure to the virus.

"This is the right moment, but we've got to do it cautiously," Johnson said in a statement defending the reopening. His stance is that mass-vaccination has weakened the link between infections and severe illness and deaths in England, and that easing restrictions to get the economy back up and running now will help avoid a flood of cases in the fall, right as hospitals deal with seasonal flu and other winter maladies. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the other nations in the U.K., were maintaining some COVID-19 restrictions despite the move by Johnson's government, which only dictates health policy in England.