Hugging friends and family could be allowed in two weeks time under the first significant easing of social distancing restrictions.
Ministers are expected to approve the next stage of the road map from May 17, which will include allowing Britons to have physical contact with people from other households for the first time in more than a year.
The country’s hugely-successful vaccine drive – coupled with months under restrictions – has meant just one in 1,000 people in England now have Covid.
Government guidance states the advice ‘on social distancing between friends and family’ will be updated on May 17.
A government source told The Times: ‘The data is looking very good. The scientists say we’re on track for the next stage, unless something changes dramatically.’
People will still be advised social distance with strangers, on public transport and at work.
But the success of measures to protect the most vulnerable mean that the advice on hugging will extend to everyone, not only those who have been vaccinated, it is understood.
Sources suggest Brits will be told to decide on their own levels of risk ‘for their own circumstances’.
It comes after data from the Office for National Statistics showed the number of infections is lower than at any point since early September and infections have been falling constantly for five weeks.
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said that the ONS survey results were ‘particularly important’ as this would have been the first week to show any potential evidence that the relaxation of lockdown measures since April 12 had caused a negative impact.
‘That there is no evidence of an increased transmission risk is reassuring,’ he said.
Clive Dix, the interim chairman of the government’s vaccine taskforce, said Britain was unlikely to face fresh waves of the virus or to return to lockdowns thanks to the successful jab roll out.
He said the country was was ‘well on the road to recovery’ with data on vaccines showing that they ‘work incredibly well and that they will reduce the disease burden [symptomatic cases] in the UK to, I think personally, close to zero by August’.
In a further easing of restrictions, it emerged today that all care home residents will be allowed to make outdoor visits to see family and friends from Tuesday without the need to isolate for 14 days on their return.
And international travel looks set to resume on May 17 as well, but with mandatory Covid tests and quarantine likely remaining in place for most holiday destinations.
Just a ‘tiny handful’ of countries are expected to make it onto the green list, the Daily Telegraph reports.
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