Six biggest coronavirus U-turns in the six months since lockdown

Boris Johnson’s U-turns have come thick and fast during the pandemic (Picture: Getty/ PA)

Today marks six months since Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown, and the country is once again waking up to another government U-turn.

The Prime Minister officially dropped the government’s message to ‘go back to work’ yesterday as he announced a series of restrictions to fight a second wave of coronavirus.

Workers were encouraged to return to the office in early August to help get the economy moving again.

But Brits are now being told to ‘work from home if you can’ as infection rates surge across the UK.

The about-face is the latest in a long line of U-turns during the pandemic, so to mark the six-month milestone, we decided to put a list together of the most damaging reversals.

Visit our live blog for the latest updates: Coronavirus news live

Herd immunity

The government came under fierce criticism over ‘herd immunity’ (Picture: Getty Images)

On March 13, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said 40 million people in the UK may need to catch coronavirus to ‘build up some kind of herd immunity’ and prevent the virus coming back.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) slammed the approach, saying not enough was known about the virus to determine if it would be effective.

Days later, Matt Hancock abandoned the plan, calling it a scientific concept rather than a government strategy. The prime minister later announced the lockdown.

A-level results

Students protested for days after A-levels were released (Picture: PA)

The government abandoned plans to give pupils their A-level and GCSE grades based on a controversial algorithm devised by regulator Ofqual.

Backing down to the demands of students and teachers on August 17, ministers announced A-level results would be determined by teacher-based assessments.

Boris Johnson and the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson had previously defended the ‘robust’ system, despite nearly 40% of grades being downgraded from teacher predictions.

Mr Williamson insisted there would be ‘no U-turn, no change’ as thousands of pupils protested in the streets with signs that read ‘You’re Gavin a laugh’ and ‘Get Gav Gone’.

The U-turn came just days before GCSE results were due to come out.

Contact tracing app

The long-awaited NHS ‘test and trace’ app is due out this week (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The UK is due to get its long-awaited contact tracing app on Thursday, some five months after the Health Secretary declared it would be ‘crucial’ for preventing the spread of coronavirus.

The government had planned for a national roll-out of the NHS app, but ditched the plans in June after tests on the Isle of Wight revealed several faults.

After spending millions of pounds on the flawed technology, Mr Hancock said the NHS would switch to a model designed by Apple and Google.

Marcus Rashford’s school meals campaign

Marcus Rashford forced the government into a U-turn (Picture: Getty Images)

Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford appealed to the government to extend the children’s food voucher scheme into the summer holidays.

But Cabinet minister Grant Shapps resisted, arguing free school meals were not normally extended over the summer.

A few hours later, Downing Street confirmed the scheme would indeed be extended.

Coronavirus testing target

Matt Hancock fell short of his pledge to carry out 100,000 coronavirus tests by April 30 (Picture: PA)

Mr Hancock set a goal of achieving 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April 30.

But the government only achieved 81,978 tests by the deadline, despite claiming it had hit 122,347.

The government’s figures included 27,497 tests sent out to homes, as well as 12,872 tests sent to satellite sites.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.