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(LONDON) — England, which has faced more than 14 months of lockdowns as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and waned, is set to fully reopen July 19, despite a rising caseload in one of the most vaccinated places in the world.

While the other nations of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are responsible for setting their own restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has moved forward with the plan to end social distancing in England, having already delayed reopening by a month.

The vulnerable section of the population has been told by the government “follow the same guidance as everyone else,” but they “may wish to think particularly carefully about additional precautions you might wish to continue to take.”

Everyone on the “Shielded Patient List” (some 3.7 million) should have been offered a vaccine, the government said.

As of July 15, 261,832 cases had been recorded in the previous seven days, a 32.6% increase from the previous week. In the seven days preceding July 11, according the latest available data, there were 3,933 hospitalizations – an increase of 46.8% from the week before, according to official government data.

The delta variant, which is more transmissible than the original coronavirus strain, is now responsible for around 95% of new cases in the U.K., according to The Lancet.

Experts warn that the reopening could lead to a surge in cases, but others say that how much they will increase is a question, which is one reason officials say there may be no good time to do it.

‘Proceed now with caution’

Ahead of the full reopening, mass events have been held including the European Championships, with tens of thousands attending soccer games in London. Social distancing collapsed during celebrations for England’s path to the final.

The relaxation will put an end to limits on social gatherings and mandated mask use, though some businesses and transport authorities have indicated mask use will continue to be mandatory.

The new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, warned on BBC radio that lifting the restrictions could lead to 100,000 cases a day this summer. However, Javid has said that the success of the vaccine program – which has seen 67.1% of the adult population fully vaccinated – appears to have partially broken the link between cases and hospitalizations.

“When you look at hospitalizations and deaths, deaths, for example, [they are] are one thirtieth of what they were the last time we saw case numbers of that type,” Javid told Sky News this month. Javid announced that he tested positive on Saturday, and will now be isolating, although he said his symptoms were mild and he was fully vaccinated.

Some sections of the British media have dubbed the upcoming date as “Freedom Day.” But Johnson stressed that while restrictions are being lifted, personal responsibility remains. He said that while cases are rising, they are at the “middle range of [government scientists’] projections for infections and at the lower end of their projections for mortality.”

“But it is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution,” he said earlier this week. “And I cannot say this powerfully or emphatically enough. This pandemic is not over. This disease coronavirus continues to carry risks for you and your family. We cannot simply revert instantly from Monday, the 19th of July to life as it was before COVID. We will stick to our plan to lift legal restrictions and to lift social distancing.”

Several leading doctors co-authored an open letter in The Lancet, warning that that the easing of restrictions is “dangerous and premature.” And the government’s approach contrasts with that of Israel, a similarly vaccinated population, which has moved to reimpose some social distancing restrictions after a rise in cases. At an international summit on Friday, over 1,200 scientists and public health experts backed the letter in The Lancet, warning that the reopening had the potential to allow vaccine resistant variants to emerge that could be exported to the rest of the world.

In an interview with ABC News this week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris warned that “the big numbers” of cases were coming from Europe and the Americas, lamenting the “extraordinary belief in many of you, particularly the north, the northern hemisphere, in the U.S. and in Europe, that somehow it’s over.”

Won’t disappear any time soon

While the vaccines have partially stemmed the number of hospitalizations and deaths, both long COVID and the possibility of new variants are potential concerns for any government looking to go down the same course, according to David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

“Well, I think the first thing to understand is that this disease is becoming endemic and when it becomes endemic, that means it circulates in the population on a permanent basis,” according to Heymann.

Fundamentally, that means the epidemiology of the virus is changing in the U.K., with younger people more likely to be infected and hospitalized due to being lower down on the priority list of vaccines, he said.

“Now, people have to learn how to do their own risk assessment as they’ve learned for other infectious diseases like sexually transmitted infections,” he said. “And they need then to do the proper strategies to protect themselves and to protect others.”

Whatever happens, the novel coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, even in vaccinated populations, he said.

“It will not end even if there are 70% of the people vaccinated or more or 70% with immunity, it will still have an opportunity to circulate in those populations and it will be reintroduced from time to time. So we’re looking at a virus which is establishing itself and many countries are taking different approaches. We just don’t know which approach will be best.”

Much will depend on whether the rate of hospitalizations and deaths rise once again to a point where they become intolerable, although the government has yet to provide a number which would provoke new restrictions. For now though, the government appears set on the full reopening of society in England, with the other nations of the U.K. set to chart a more cautious path.

“To those who say ‘why take this step now’ I say ‘if not now, when?” Javid told the U.K. parliament this month. “There will never be a perfect time to take this step because we simply cannot eradicate this virus.”

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(MOSCOW) — Trevor Reed, one of two American former Marines that U.S. officials say is being held hostage by Russia, has been transferred to a prison camp a few hundred miles from Moscow, according to a prison rights monitoring group.

Reed, 30, and the other ex-Marine, Paul Whelan, have spent about two years in detention in Russia imprisoned on charges their families and American officials say were fabricated by Russia in order to seize them as bargaining chips.

President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the two Americans’ detention and the possibility of a prisoner swap to free them at their summit in Switzerland last month.

Reed has now been moved to a prison camp in Mordovia, a region about 350 miles from Moscow, Alexey Melnikov, an official at Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission confirmed to ABC News on Friday. The other former Marine, Whelan, has already spent nearly a year in a camp in the same region, known for its high number of prisons.

“Trevor Reed was removed this morning from Moscow’s Investigative Isolation Jail No. 5 to one of the Republic of Mordovia’s camps,” said Melnikov, whose commission is empowered by the Russian government to inspect prison conditions.

What to know about 2 former US Marines held by Russia ahead of Putin-Biden summit
Melnikov said he did not know which camp in Mordovia Reed had been sent to and that it is not yet clear if it will be the same camp where Whelan is held, which is a prison used to house foreign convicts.

Reed fell into the hands of Russian police in the summer of 2019 following a drunken party in Moscow where he was visiting his girlfriend.

Police initially said they were taking him to sober up at the station but after agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence agency arrived to question him Reed was charged with assaulting a police officer, according to his family. He was put on trial on the charges that U.S. officials have said were absurd. A court in July 2020 sentenced Reed to nine years in prison.

Reed, whose family lives in Texas, spent nearly two years in detention in Moscow pre-trial jails. But last month, a court rejected his appeal against the sentence, clearing the way for him to be moved to a prison camp.

From early in their detention, Russia has suggested trading Reed and Whelan for Russians serving prison sentences in the United States.

Hope for a potential trade have risen recently following Biden and Putin’s summit in Geneva, where both sides signaled a willingness to discuss finding a possible deal.

Since 2019, Russian officials have named several Russians they would like to see released, including Viktor Bout, one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, and Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot jailed on drug smuggling charges.

Russia state media has more recently highlighted another Russian citizen jailed in the U.S., Roman Seleznev, who is serving a 27-year sentence on criminal hacking charges.

Bout’s release has been seen as a non-starter for American officials because of the severity of his crimes. But Yaroshenko and Seleznev are seen as more likely to be included in any trade.

Yaroshenko was arrested in a 2010 Drug Enforcement Agency sting in Liberia during which he agreed to ship cocaine to Africa and the U.S. He is serving a 20-year sentence.

Seleznev was captured by U.S. law enforcement agents in Maldives in 2014 and convicted of running a massive hacking scheme to steal credit card data from small businesses in the U.S.

All three men are suspected to have links to Russian intelligence. During Seleznev’s trial, prosecutors provided documents alleging that Seleznev was tipped off to an earlier FBI investigation against him by Russia’s Federal Security Service or FSB, after FBI agents met with the Russian agency.

The Biden administration has said freeing Reed and Whelan is a priority, and last month, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan said he expected there would be talks with the Russian government on them both.

Reed’s family had hoped he would remain in Moscow until a deal to free him was negotiated.

The Russian news service Interfax cited an anonymous source as saying that Reed’s transfer did not mean a trade for him was less likely. The move instead may just be the Russian judicial process continuing. Russian prisoners are usually moved a few weeks after an appeal is turned down.

“Reed’s transfer to a penitentiary absolutely does not mean that his possible exchange for a Russian is no longer on the table. He may still be extradited to the United States if the relevant consensus is reached with the U.S. side,” the source told Interfax.

Whelan, 51, was security executive for the auto parts company BorgWarner when he was arrested in late December 2018 in his hotel room by FSB agents while visiting Moscow for a friend’s wedding. He was accused of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a closed trial on charges his family and U.S. officials have said were fabricated.

Whelan spoke to ABC News by phone from the former Gulag camp last November.

“It’s pretty grim. Quite dilapidated,” Whelan said. “There’s probably like 50 to 60 of us in the building. So we kind of live on top of each other.”

He said the inmates work eight-hour shifts in a workshop he described as “Dickensian” and that they are only permitted to shower twice a week. But other prisoners treated him well he said, nicknaming him “Tourist.”

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(PORT-AU-PRINCE) — Mamyrah Prosper moved to the U.S. in 1998 with some of her family members. But while she came looking for opportunities, it’s Haiti that she calls home.

The Africana studies professor and mother of one often visits her family and friends on the island. But she says that these days, even before the assassination of the country’s President Jovenal Moïse a week ago, the country is scarier than it used to be.

“I arrived in Haiti at the end of May, so well before the assassination, which, I guess, we could have said was not quite surprising. … There were several massacres that took place at the beginning of June,” she told ABC News, referring to an influx of gang violence that has displaced thousands of residents. “So, before the Jovenal assassination, that was really what was weighing on everybody’s mind: ‘What’s happening next?’”

“You have an entire city that is controlled by gangs that are able to circulate very freely… And so, people were generally feeling extremely scared to even do very basic things like go find food, which is something we all must do inevitably,” she added.

Moïse’s death has thrown the country further into turmoil. Having spent years working to dig itself out of economic and political strife, the president’s assassination has created a power vacuum and made residents vulnerable to the widespread fear they’ve long faced.

A week ago, Moïse was home in the capital of Port-au-Prince sleeping with his wife when mercenaries entered the fortified home and killed the president, leaving the first lady critically wounded.

More than two dozen people, mostly foreigners, have been accused of playing a role in the assassination. However, authorities have arrested Haitian-born Florida resident Emmanuel Sanon, 63, accusing him of acting as the middleman between the alleged assassins and the unnamed masterminds.

Haiti’s national Police Chief Léon Charles said Wednesday that Sanon, a longtime critic of the Haitian government, wanted to take it over himself. He said that Sanon arrived on the island via private aircraft in June and accused the Miami doctor of contracting with a security company to enlist the services of the men who are now under arrest, including 18 Colombians and three Americans — one of whom occasionally worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

Sanon told police he had no knowledge of the attack, CNN reported on Wednesday.

In the wake of the assassination, Haitian officials declared a state of emergency and Martial Law, the latter of which was lifted by the weekend. However, with the country still reeling, many were hesitant to leave home.

“Life has been very hard,” Francois Jean, a shoe seller in Port-au-Prince, told ABC News in French on Sunday. The father of four said he hadn’t eaten in three days. “Since Wednesday up until today, I haven’t made a dime. … It’s just today that I see the activity has restarted, and even though it has restarted, the people don’t have any money.”

Makeson Pierre, a shoe-shiner, says he’s facing the same struggles and that he would improve his situation if he could.

“The country is difficult,” he told ABC News in French. “We have no water to bathe. We have no food to eat; we’re hungry. … See how I’m cleaning these shoes here. Yeah, if I could find something else to do, I would do it. … I’d like to get out of this situation.”

The shortages don’t just apply to food, though. At a gas station on Sunday, a group of people could be seen clambering for their turn at the pump.

“You have to fight to find gas,” a father told ABC News in French. “The opportunity to get gas is spontaneous.”

He noted that many of the people at the pump would have probably been at church instead.

The predominantly Catholic country is also highly religious, and at the same pump, Helene Jean appeared in her Sunday’s best, with her Bible still in her purse.

“I came from church and when I saw that they were giving fuel here, I went home and went back to get the gallon [containers] and came back to get some fuel,” she told ABC News in French.

Prosper said there is a lack of opportunities for everyday Haitians struggling for a better way of life. She’s among a younger generation of Haitians and Haitian Americans asking for the international community to support Haitian-led solutions to the country’s problems.

“If the U.S. people should do anything, right, it’s to support the actual Haitians who are embedded in their communities and have been organizing for decades — Haitians who say we are ready to take on the role that people have already chosen for us to do,” Prosper said.

“It’s actually the international intervention that has prevented Haiti from being able to determine what it wants to do,” she continued.

Many activists like Prosper have long criticized the way foreign humanitarian aid is distributed in Haiti. She says that the aid, though necessary for providing vital support to the country, has instead motivated further violence and corruption in the government and business sectors.

A century-long debt and the current struggle for power

Once a wealthy French colony built off the backs of enslaved laborers producing sugar and coffee, the country fell into economic hardship after a slave revolt that resulted in their independence in 1804.

But it paid a price for becoming the world’s oldest Black republic: France demanded the new nation pay indemnity for overthrowing the French slaveholders. The debt of 90 million gold francs — estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars today — was so high that the country spent over 100 years paying it off. In the years since there have been growing calls for France to pay that money back.

Over the years, Haiti, currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, had gone through periods of dictatorship, most notably that of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the mid-1900s. The country was dealt a severe blow in 2010 when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, killing an estimated 250,000 people. The country again faced another natural disaster with Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

The president’s assassination has further entrenched the turmoil occurring in Haitian cities, even though many Haitians did not view Moïse favorably.

With the line of succession remaining unclear, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has stepped up to lead the country’s scattered government with help from its military and national police force even as he faces opposition from its Senate. Joseph has declared a “state of siege” and has indicated he’d only assume control of the nation until a new president is elected — presidential and legislative elections had been slated for later this year.

Moïse’s political opponents had argued that his five-year presidential term had ended in February. The late president had argued that he had another year left after a disputed 2016 election pushed his inauguration to 2017.

He’d been governing by decree since January 2020 after the country failed to hold legislative elections and the legislature’s mandate expired. Opposition leaders accused him of trying to restore Haiti to a dictatorship. Then, earlier this year, the late president ordered three supreme court justices to retire and arrested nearly two dozen people, including government officials, for allegedly plotting a coup.

Moïse told a Spanish-language newspaper in January that he feared people wanted to kill him. The Haitian ambassador to the U.S. Bocchit Edmond told reporters following the president’s death that there was “no warning” ahead of his assassination.

The escalating constitutional crisis had sparked protests and intensified gang violence amid the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the country.

As a result of the political chaos, some activists and politicians are living in fear of being targeted by gangs. Ralph Francois is a social entrepreneur and CEO of Cocread, an organization focused on building sustainable communities in Haiti.

In January, he organized a protest demanding the government step up the search for his kidnapped friend. Then, two months ago, Francois told ABC News that he fled Haiti after learning that a gang had allegedly attempted to kidnap him.

“That day, I was supposed to be there but … because I had a Skype meeting where we had to plan — doing a demonstration for one of our friends that had been kidnapped that day,” he said. “So my neighbor was kidnapped. It’s like a whole house, and I live upstairs and she lives downstairs. She had two daughters. … It was shocking.”

Francois described the situation in Haiti as a “monster” the government can’t control and said that it has culminated in the president’s assassination.

“Our president has been killed … in a humiliat[ing] way, in his room,” he said. “So, if the president is not safe in Haiti, who’s safe? How can we trust the government who failed to protect us — who failed to protect the president — to engage us in the political process and bring serenity and security? They don’t have credibility for that.”

Haitian activists and educators are demanding better leadership, hoping it’ll help put an end to the country’s political corruption.

“Even though the situation of employment in Haiti is difficult, for women, it’s especially difficult,” Shawma Aurelier, executive director of Port-au-Prince-based women’s empowerment organization SOFA, told ABC News through a translator.

She said the president’s assassination will cause more people to lose hope in changing the country’s future.

“They come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to leave Haiti,” she said.

“It will be very difficult for Haiti to be rebuilt if all the residents and persons living in the country should decide the best solution is to leave,” she added.

Support from afar

Families and friends of Haiti’s residents are currently the largest source of external financial aid sent to the struggling country.

In Miami, much of the staff at the Chef Creole restaurant in the Little Haiti neighborhood send money to loved ones back home. Eslane Charles has been working there and told ABC News through a translator that she’s been supporting her parents and children from across the Caribbean.

“She said it’s tough,” said Wilkinson Sejour, chef and owner of the restaurant, translating for Charles. “Although you send money, it’s never enough.”

Sejour sees his restaurant as an economic engine for his employees and their families and said they need the money now more than ever.

“As soon as they get paid, they are dashing out of the restaurant so they can go to a local supermarket to do a money transfer,” he said.

Sejour said he’s noticed the glimmer of hope in his fellow Haitians and Haitian Americans grow dimmer recently as all the money they send seems to have no impact on the country’s outlook. But he implored people not to get discouraged.

“I know it’s depressing sometimes when people give and give and give … and they feel that their giving is not doing anything,” he said. “And I’m saying, on behalf of Little Haiti, on behalf of mini Haitis, on behalf of big Haiti herself, please don’t lose hope on us. Continue giving us everything that your conscious and your heart will allow you to give. And with the grace of Christ, we’ll be all right.”

Self-determination in Haiti

Francois, the first Haitian to be a Yale World Fellow, says he intends to return to and live in Haiti with his friends and family members. He said the next generation of young Haitian leaders like himself have been ready to take on the responsibility of making a better Haiti.

“We are ready. We are ready to take the lead and make sure that Haiti could become a land of security, a land of prosperity for its children because we have to,” he said. “I spent my whole life in Haiti. I work[ed] hard for that, and I don’t see myself living in other countries and I’m sure that there are other people in my generation who see that also.”

“I want the international community to listen to Haitians’ self-determination, to listen to civil societies,” he added. “To stop looking at Haiti as a land where we have two sides of political opponents fighting for power. It is more than that.”Prosper says she recognizes the privilege she has in being able to travel in and out of the country amid its many conflicts but said she remains optimistic that there will soon be a stronger Haitian-led solution to the country’s problems.

“I have no other choice but to be optimistic … when the people who are experiencing the hardship — and who are really faced with very dangerous situations — continue to have hope and are always fired up for the next fight,” she said. “So, I only have hope.”

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