"'I feel less safe without Covid measures"

Medically vulnerable people say the decision to end Covid restrictions means their freedoms being eroded.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that legal requirements, including the need to self-isolate if you test positive, will end on Thursday.

Two clinically vulnerable women in the West say not knowing who is infected means it is now more dangerous for them to leave their homes.

"It doesn't feel safe," said Chloe Ball-Hopkins, from Gloucestershire.

"My friends and family will continue to try and keep me safe, my partner will keep me safe, they'll continue to test before they meet me," said the 25-year-old from Wotton-under-Edge.

Miss Ball-Hopkins has already had her fourth vaccine dose as she is considered extremely clinically vulnerable.

She has a rare form of muscular dystrophy called nemaline myopathy which affects her respiratory system, and contracted sepsis in 2019 which undermined her immune system further.

Miss Ball-Hopkins said that while the easing of restrictions would feel like freedom to much of the population, it meant the opposite for her.

"I'm supposed to go out and live my life normally yet now I won't know if someone next to me in a supermarket is literally breathing Covid down on me, as I'm in a wheelchair.

"I was actually probably safer in January when everyone was wearing masks than I will be in a week's time. That makes no sense," she said.

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Source: BBC News, 22 February 2022