Britain plans to scrap laws requiring face masks and social distancing this month.

However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged yesterday that lifting the restrictions will drive surging coronavirus cases higher.

Mr Johnson said legal controls will be replaced by “personal responsibility” when the country moves to the final stage of its lockdown-lifting roadmap. That’s scheduled to happen on July 19, though Mr Johnson said a final decision would come on July 12.

The change will mean people can throw away masks after months of enforced face-covering, though they will still be recommended in some enclosed spaces such as public transport.

The removal of social-distancing rules will allow nightclubs to reopen for the first time in 16 months, and people to once again order drinks at the bar in a pub.

No longer will customers have to scan a phone app to provide their contact details when entering a venue.

The government will also stop instructing people to work from home if they can, leaving employers free to bring staff back to offices.

Britain has recorded more than 128,000 coronavirus deaths, the second-highest toll in Europe after Russia, and infections are rising due to the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Confirmed cases have shot up from about 2,000 a day earlier this year to 25,000 a day in the past week. But the number of deaths is broadly stable, at fewer than 20 a day.

Public health officials say Britain’s vaccination programme has weakened the link between infections and deaths, though not severed it.

So far, 86pc of UK adults have received at least one vaccine dose and 64pc are fully vaccinated.

Mr Johnson said Britain would have to “learn to live with this virus” – a major shift in tone from a leader who has previously painted Covid-19 as an enemy to be vanquished.

That message was welcomed by lockdown-sceptic MPs in the Conservative Party, who say the economic and social damage of such long-lasting virus restrictions outweighs the public health benefits, and the tabloid press, which have dubbed July 19 ‘freedom day’.

But Richard Tedder, a virologist at Imperial College London, said easing up while infections are still rampant “comes with the very real risk of facilitating the escape of variants which will be even more resistant to vaccines and potentially more infectious.

“Failing to recognise this is playing with fire,” he said.