As COVID rules lift, high-risk people feel ‘our life and our freedom are not as important’

Since the start of the pandemic, Clare Dawson has paid close attention to the government’s announcements of new coronavirus restrictions, to see if it was safe enough for her to leave her parents’ home in Surrey, England.

On Monday, she was discouraged. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain announced that people in England who test positive for the virus would soon no longer be required to isolate and moved to end most free testing. Dawson prepared herself for more isolation, anxiety and loneliness.

The government has said that it is ending the remainder of virus restrictions to help the country shift to more of an approach of living with the virus. But some critics say the move is premature and overlooks those who are most clinically vulnerable, especially the hundreds of thousands who are immunocompromised. In the United States, many immunocompromised and higher-risk people have also felt left behind by the flurry of lifted restrictions.