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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isabel Harman and I'm joined now by Katie Balls and James Forsythe.

Well, we've had a range of statements in the House of Commons today from Health Secretary Sajad Javid and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson on the next steps for unlocking in the

country generally and also changes to bubbles in schools. James, just explain what we've learned

today. So we've learned today that if you are double vaccinated and have been so for a fortnight,

from August the 16th, you will not need to self-isolate if you have been in contact with a positive case.

Instead, you'll be told to go and take a PCR test, and if that is negative, you can continue

with life and normal. Now, I think this announcement is interesting for two reasons. First of all,

I think it is a realisation that the policy of trying to tell double vaccinated people to

self-isolate for 10 days wasn't going to hold because people would say, well, if these vaccines work,

why am I having to self-isolate just on contact of a positive case? But I'm also very struck by

the fact that the government is not lifting this restriction from July the 19th. They're instead

lifting it from August to 16th. Now, I think we can infer from that, but the government thinks that from August

the 16th, cases will be going down, not up. So they are, they view that as a safer moment. Now,

I mean, this also has a consequence for the reopening on July the 19th, because if you're in a

situation where anyone who's in contact with someone with COVID has to

self-isolate regardless of whether they've been double-jabs or not, I think that is going to

put a dampener on the idea of kind of street parties to celebrate the lifting of restrictions

or not because I think there'll still be quite a few people who'll be wary about going to

properly mass events and mass gatherings if the risk

...