(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce an end to England’s Covid-19 regulations on Monday, a day after the U.K.’s 95-year-old monarch Queen Elizabeth II tested positive for the virus.

The Cabinet will meet early Monday to sign off on the so-called “Living with Covid” plan ahead of a planned statement by the premier to Parliament in the afternoon, and a news conference from Johnson in the early evening.

“I am not saying you can totally throw caution to the wind, but Covid remains dangerous if you are vulnerable or if you not vaccinated, but we need people to be much more confident and get back to work,” Johnson told the BBC on Sunday. “We are in a different world.”

The queen’s office said on Sunday she’s experiencing mild, “cold-like” symptoms but expects to continue “light duties” at Windsor Castle over the coming week.

“You can’t help but notice that the juxtaposition of the monarch being diagnosed with Covid -- or testing positive -- literally the day before we will get the update from the PM as to how things move forward with the ending of all restrictions,” Tory MP Caroline Nokes, a longtime critic of Johnson, said on Times Radio on Sunday. 

“I’ve certainly had a post-bag over the past couple of days from people who are clinically extremely vulnerable, asking exactly what that’s going to mean for them,” Nokes said. 

The U.K. has had more than 161,000 Covid deaths, the second-highest fatality count in Europe after Russia, despite one of the world’s most successful vaccine programs. Mired by a domestic scandal about parties in his Downing Street office and residence during coronavirus lockdowns, alongside a series of self-inflicted missteps, Johnson is keen to present some good news to a public weary of restrictions.

Despite Johnson seeking to shift political attention away from allegations of lockdown rule-breaking by him and his team, the story is still dominating the U.K. news. In his BBC interview in Sunday, among questions about Ukraine and Covid, Johnson also had to bat off multiple inquiries about whether he would resign if it turned out he has broken the law or misled Parliament, providing one measure of how his administration is still distracted by the issue.

Airbrushing Reality?

Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association Council, told the BBC on Sunday that the timing of the announcement “seems a bit odd,” adding that it’s a “political announcement almost pretending that Covid no longer exists.”

“Living with Covid doesn’t mean that you airbrush the reality that there are still around a thousand people who are dying every week with Covid,” Nagpaul said. 

Johnson is set to announce that people testing positive for Covid-19 will no longer have to self-isolate. The government will also wind down its free testing program, which is costing 2 billion pounds ($2.72 billion) a month.

“The pandemic is not over but thanks to the incredible vaccine roll-out we are now one step closer towards a return to normality and finally giving people back their freedoms, while continuing to protect ourselves and others,” Johnson will say on Monday, according to his office. 

Concerns About Queen 

Queen Elizabeth attended in-person audiences at her Windsor Castle residence last week, her first major public engagement for more than three months, but complained to one attendee of suffering from stiffness and was photographed holding a walking stick. 

The queen had been mostly resting since mid-October, after canceling a run of engagements and spending a night in hospital undergoing tests.

Concerns about the queen contracting Covid heightened this month after Prince Charles, her son and heir, tested positive after having had contact with the monarch. She is fully vaccinated. The revelation also comes weeks after the U.K.’s longest-serving monarch completed 70 years on the throne on Feb. 6. The country is due to hold nationwide celebrations in June to officially mark her Platinum Jubilee. 

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