When will the lockdown end? Based on current evidence – never, as it is thought Downing street are considering only easing the lockdown once positive test results for SARS-CoV-2 have dropped to below 1000 a day. A number that has not been achieved in any single day since the casedemic began in early 2020.

A number that is also going to be even harder to achieve if scientists get their way and manage to have tiredness and headache added to the list of official “Covid” symptoms that require the person to take an unreliable PCR test.

Boris Johnson is supposedly going to outline his “road-map” to easing restrictions shortly, and it is thought that schools will be the first to open, but we have been give no clues as to when hospitality and “non-essential” retail will be allowed to reopen their doors. Don’t get your hopes up as there will always be some form of restrictions in place. We predict a similar scenario to last year, relaxed during the Summer and much tighter restrictions come Winter.

The foreign secretary Dominic Raab said that “There is no single cast iron formula or one particular indicator that above all other considerations can decide when lockdown will be lifted, we will look at all of the indicators and evidence”.

But a senior Whitehall source has apparently told the mainstream media that “”For any significant relaxation of lockdown, household mixing and reopening pubs, case numbers have to be in the hundreds, not thousands,”.

But that number’s about to get a whole lot harder to achieve as Scientists are calling for fatigue, headache, sore throat and diarrhoea to be added to the list of Covid symptoms that require the person to have a PCR test.

Scientists at King’s College London have said that the current rules of only carrying out PCR tests through the Test and Trace system to people who have a cough, fever or loss or taste and smell (a.k.a a blocked nose) potentially misses up to a third of actual cases.

They claim that extending the list to include fatigue, headache, sore throat and diarrhoea would detect up to 96% of symptomatic cases rather than the 69% detected with the current approach.

And they’re right, because the PCR test will find anything the user wants to find if they look hard enough, so more PCR tests equals more cases, more false positive cases.

According to the scientists data, 31% of people who are supposedly ill with Covid do not have any of the three “classic” symptoms. Professor Tim Spector from King’s College London said: “We’ve known since the beginning that just focusing testing on the classic triad of cough, fever and anosmia misses a significant proportion of positive cases.

“This is especially important with new variants that may cause different symptoms. For us, the message for the public is clear: if you’re feeling newly unwell, it could be Covid and you should get a test.”

“A few months ago ago we added the loss of taste and smell that many people get – I got when I had COVID – to the symptom list.

“We always keep that under review. Throughout this pandemic we’ve been learning more and more about the science around this virus.

“And if there are further symptoms we think people should be alerted to, I will very much take the clinical advice on that.”

Notice how he slipped in that new variants may cause different symptoms? It wouldn’t surprise us if ‘heat-rash’ is added to the list of Covid symptoms if we have a scorching Summer this year.

Think Lockdown is meant to end? Think again.