Prime Minister Boris Johnson indicates coronavirus lockdown relaxation by early next week

Boris Johnson (R) directly clashed in the House of Commons for the first time with newly-elected Labour leader Keir Starmer (L)

Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has given strong indications that the UK-wide lockdown will be eased from next Monday (May 11).

Sparring with new Labour leader, Keir Starmer, for the first time in the House of Commons, the PM suggested a “phase two” of the UK’s coronavirus crisis management will come into force after he gives an update on Sunday (May 10).

“We’ll want if we possibly can to get going with some of these measures on Monday”, Johnson said at Prime Minister’s Questions Time in the House of Commons.

The PM’s announcement to potentially ease the lockdown came on the same day it was announced a further 649 people in the UK had died of COVID-19 (the disease caused by the coronavirus), taking the country’s overall death toll to over 30,000.

According to official figures, the UK now has the second highest coronavirus-related mortality rate in the world, after the United States.

Johnson did not provide any details as to which features of the lockdown will be relaxed from May 11 onwards.

The UK has been in lockdown since March 23 and throughout this period the government has been consistently criticized by the opposition and wider society for mismanaging the crisis.

Only yesterday one of the leading scientists advising the government on coronavirus management was forced to quit after he admitted breaching the same lockdown rules he had advocated.

More broadly, there have been mounting concerns about the politicization of the core scientific group advising the government on containing the pandemic after it was revealed that the PM’s controversial strategist, Dominic Cummings, had been parachuted into the group.