THE wearing of face masks will become voluntary and the one-metre rule are likely to end in two weeks’ time, the Prime Minister has said.

During a Downing Street briefing held this evening, Monday, Boris Johnson appeared confident that Covid-19 restrictions currently in place in England would be lifted on July 19.

As part of step four of the lifting of social distancing measures, all businesses will be allowed to open, there will be no limit on numbers allowed to meet indoors or outdoors and limited capacities at sporting or cultural events will be removed, as will restrictions on care home visitors.

Meanwhile, Government advice to encourage working from home will be removed.

The PM said that while the legal requirement to wear a face mask would be abolished, guidance to do so in some settings would remain.

And the one-metre social distancing rule will only continue in specified places, such as airports.

Final confirmation of whether this step will be taken on the planned date will be given next Monday, July 12.

Mr Johnson told the press conference: “This pandemic is far from over.

“We’re seeing cases rise fairly rapidly and we’re seeing rising hospital admissions, and we must reconcile ourselves to more deaths from Covid.

“We must take a balanced decision, and there’s only one reason why we can contemplate progressing to step four – the continuing effectiveness of the vaccine rollout.

“When we paused step four, we wanted to get more jabs into people’s arms – and we have.

“These vaccines are successful, with the majority of the admitted to hospital unvaccinated.

“We must be honest with ourselves – if we can’t reopen our society in the next few weeks, then we must ask ourselves when will we be able to return to normal?

“The alternative is to open up in winter when the virus will have an advantage, or not to open at all this year.”

Mr Johnson also said that the period of time between jabs for under 40s will be reduced for 12 to eight weeks, with the aim of double jabbing all over 18s by the autumn.

Further announcements on schools, travel and self-isolation are expected this week.