Boris Johnson says "today is not the day we can declare victory over Covid" because the virus is "not going away".

But he adds it is the day when the efforts of the last two years finally "enable us to protect ourselves whilst restoring our liberties in full".

"I do believe this is a moment of pride for our nation and a source of hope for all that we can achieve in the years to come," he concludes.

But while striking an optimistic note, the prime minister remains cautious.

"We should be clear that the pandemic is not over," he says, adding that there may be "significant resurgences".

"Our scientists are certain that there will be new variants and it is very possible that those will be worse than Omicron," he says.

But the government will continue to protect most vulnerable with vaccinations and treatments, he says, referencing plans for a new spring booster dose for over-75s and the most vulnerable groups.

And he says the government is working with retailers to ensure people will always be able to buy a test, even after mass free testing ends in England in April.

The prime minister says as Omicron is known to be less severe the "colossal scale" of testing is now much less valuable in preventing serious illness.

He says we should be proud of the testing programme - but says that for last year the budget for it was bigger than that of the Home Office.

This must be scaled back to focus on the most vulnerable, he says, confirming that mass free testing for all in England is coming to an end, on 1 April.

From today, staff and students in most education settings will also no longer have to undertake twice weekly testing.

As announced in the Commons earlier, the prime minister confirms that from Thursday the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive will end in England.

Self-isolation payments will also end from this date but statutory sick pay changes will remain for a further month.

Until 1 April people will still be advised to stay at home if they test positive - but after that people will be advised to exercise personal responsibility - as they would if they had the flu.

Boris Johnson begins by saying that from the outset "we were clear that we must chart a course back to normality" as quickly as possible.

He says as a result of the vaccine programme that is what has happened, thanks to the "brilliant scientists", the NHS, and the public coming forward to get jabbed.

The UK has emerged from the teeth of the pandemic before many others, he says, and while the pandemic is not over "we have passed the peak of the Omicron wave".

And here is Boris Johnson at the podium in Downing Street to set out the end of coronavirus measures in England.

Stay with us for what he has to say.

After Boris Johnson announced the end of Covid legal restrictions in England, these charts show how the situation has changed in recent weeks.

The prime minister's Downing Street news conference is due to begin any minute now.

Image source, EPA

The Downing Street news conference with Boris Johnson, Sir Chris Whitty, and Sir Patrick Vallance is due to start in ten minutes.

The sight of those men, and other advisers, at a Downing Street podium flanked has become familiar during the pandemic.

But, after the end of restrictions in England were announced, could this be the last time we hear from the three men together?

It is just a few weeks shy of two years since Johnson gave his first daily coronavirus update, back in March 2020. Since then thousands of people have died, while severe limits have been put in place on people's freedoms in a bid to stop the spread of Covid.

The news conferences, which ceased to be a daily event as the pandemic wore on, have been led by a variety of cabinet ministers, alongside scientific experts.

Katy Austin
Transport correspondent

Image source, Reuters

The government’s "living with Covid" plan says the infrastructure for hotel quarantine will be fully stood down from the end of March.

This system has been used for people arriving into the UK from "red list" countries. There are no countries on this list now.

The government is developing options to increase compliance with home isolation instead, if quarantine does need to be used in future.

Since 11 February, completing a simplified passenger locator form has been the only UK entry requirement for fully vaccinated travellers.

Unvaccinated people must also take a pre-departure test, plus a further test within 48 hours of arriving.

Today’s plan reiterates that new measures at the border will only be considered in “extreme circumstances”.

The government has previously announced it would develop a contingency “toolbox” of options.

The plan says measures would only be used where they are proportionate to the threat of a new variant, and effective at slowing it. The toolbox will be set out before Easter.

Ione Wells
Westminster Correspondent, BBC News

The chair of parliament's transport committee Huw Merriman, along with other Tory MPs, have called on the government to end the need for passenger locator forms when people arrive in the UK from abroad.

The prime minister said the government would be looking to provide an update on this before Easter.

Merriman said scrapping them would provide a "shot in the arm" to the travel industry.

But as ever, with any potential relaxation to travel rules, UK ministers can only control what people need to do at the UK's borders - and some countries still require proof of negative tests or vaccination to enter.

PM goes further on testing than many health experts expectedpublished at 18:22 Greenwich Mean Time 21 February 2022

18:22 GMT 21 February 2022

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Image source, PA Media

This is a significant scaling back on testing, going further than many health experts had been led to believe.

There will be no access to tests for anyone who does not have symptoms. The idea of getting rapid tests on prescription so that people who are vulnerable can ask family and friends to use them before visiting is not part of the plan.

Instead, only those deemed at-risk or social care staff will get access to tests – and only then if they have symptoms.

The at-risk group has not been defined, but is likely to be the most vulnerable who would benefit from antiviral treatments to reduce the risk of hospitalisation. It appears a healthy 75-year-old would not be able to get tested even with symptoms.

The big caveat is that the government will retain the ability to ramp testing back up if the circumstances demand it.

These changes will come in on 1 April and by that stage infection levels could be at very low rates. At that point, the scaling back of testing may not seem that significant.

If infection rates are raging at that time – considered unlikely – ministers could, of course, change approach.

The government is lifting restrictions without a plan to protect people with compromised immune systems, the Blood Cancer UK charity warns.

The charity says that of the 500,000 severely immunocompromised people in the UK, about 230,000 have blood cancer.

The plan announced by the prime minister "will cause huge anxiety among immunocompromised people and leave many of them feeling abandoned", says the charity's director of research, Helen Rowntree.

"This will lead to people finding it more difficult to live their daily lives and, sadly, some people dying from Covid."

Rowntree said other countries were offering antibody treatments to vulnerable people and urged the UK government to set out a similar approach.

Rules requiring face coverings on Transport for London services are expected to be lifted, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says. They are currently a condition of carriage - meaning they have to be worn unless a passenger is exempt (even if many people don't do so in practice).

The change comes after the government announced it would be dropping all legal Covid requirements and because there are falling infection rates in London, City Hall says.

Sadiq Khan adds:

Image source, Reuters

As expected, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced to the House of Commons that people in England who test positive for coronavirus will no longer legally have to isolate.

Here are more of the details of the rule changes announced today, which all apply to England:

• The legal requirement to stay at home if you have Covid ends on Thursday

• People will be advised to stay at home for at least five days - but from 1 April it is down to "personal responsibility"

• Routine contact tracing will end on Thursday too
• Self-isolation payments of £500 for those on low incomes are also going to end this week
• Changes to statutory sick pay and employment support allowance will end on 24 March
• Employees will no longer have to tell their bosses about their requirement to isolate
• Free testing for all is coming to an end in April - but people will be able to buy tests instead
• Th free rapid tests will be targeted to certain sections of the population, including the most vulnerable

• Some asymptomatic testing will continue in the most risky settings like social care
• The Department of Health and Social Care will receive no extra money to deliver testing
• The regular ONS coronavirus surveillance reports will continue

• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described the PM's plan as a "half-baked announcement from a government paralysed by chaos and incompetence"

Read our explainer here for all the details.

The plans are all subject to parliamentary approval.

We'll hear more from the prime minister this evening at a press conference at 19:00 GMT. He'll be joined by England's Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty and chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance.

Image source, Getty Images

The pandemic has been so severe for the entertainment sector and the trade body for the UK's live music industry has been responding to this latest change.

It welcomes the end of Covid restrictions - while also calling on the government to continue its support for the sector.

Greg Parmley, CEO of Live said the lifting of the remaining rules came as "a huge, welcome relief".

But he noted how "spiralling costs and thousands of companies struggling with pandemic debt" made it "crucial" that Number 10 does not "abandon and set the sector adrift" - just as it is starting to slowly recover.

"We are calling for a reverse to the planned hike in VAT rates and the imminent end to business rates relief in order to avoid further closures and job losses within our sector," he says.

A little earlier, the prime minister announced that the government would be scaling back free testing.

From 1 April, free testing for the general public in England will end.

You can watch the announcement below.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas earlier said in the Commons that living with Covid "does not mean ignoring it". She said the lifting of restrictions flew "in the face of advice from many NHS leaders and health experts".

Saying everyone should take personal responsibility, while taking away the means for people to do so through free tests, was "utterly perverse", she said.

For many clinically extremely vulnerable people, Lucas said that this "freedom day" was instead a "day of profound loss of freedom".

In response, Johnson said those who are clinically extremely vulnerable would have access to therapeutics and vaccines.

Ione Wells
Westminster Correspondent, BBC News

We don't know just yet how much free testing may still be available for NHS workers.

The Tory MP Andrew Percy said taking tests before his service in the NHS had helped make him feel safe - and urged the prime minister to set out "clearly" what the situation would be for NHS workers.

But the prime minister said this will be for the NHS to "determine themselves."

What we do know is the Department for Health has already been allocated its budget for the year, so that's where any funding for extra testing within the NHS would need to come from.

Hearing now from some of those within the health service, NHS Providers, which represents trusts, cautions that it would be "premature" to see the government's latest announcement as "signalling a permanent victory over Covid-19".

It can "still prove fatal for the most vulnerable", adds chief executive Chris Hopson, arguing that full data must continue to be gathered and must guide official decision-making.

Restricting free testing risks "significantly exacerbating health inequalities", he warns.

Reaction now from one union - the plans to scrap remaining Covid restrictions are "irresponsible" while thousands are still catching the virus every day, Unison, the public service union says.

General secretary Christina McAnea says ending free tests for the general public is foolish, adding that most people will simply stop testing because they cannot afford to buy tests.

She thinks those who are vulnerable to Covid have been "abandoned".