THE new UK Health Secretary made a major announcement about lifting lockdown restrictions in England in the pages of a newspaper rather than the House of Commons.

Sajid Javid, who was appointed to replace Matt Hancock as UK Health Secretary last Saturday, wrote exclusively for the Mail on Sunday about plans to go ahead with "Freedom Day" in England.

This is in spite of the UK experiencing a surge in new cases with more than 24,447 recorded in the most recent daily data, more than double the figure when the Government decided to roll back the original June 21 re-opening date.

READ MORE: UK Government wants 'whole of the Union' to lift Covid rules on July 19

Javid plans to move ahead with the July 19 relaxing of most restrictions in England despite previous insistence by the Tories to focus on data, not dates when making decisions.

The front page of the Mail on Sunday today ran a quote from Javid declaring that "opening up will make us healthier" due to a backlog of NHS cases exacerbated from the pandemic.

Writing in the paper, Javid said that we have to "learn to live with Covid-19" to restore freedoms and that the virus cannot be eliminated.

Despite accepting that cases are "going to rise significantly", the Health Secretary insisted that "no date we choose will ever come without risk".

A Downing Street source told the Mail on Sunday: "This is a big injection of freedom that will make us the most open country in Europe."

Proposals for "Freedom Day", expected to be signed off by the Cabinet tomorrow, include making mask-wearing voluntary everywhere with the exception of hospital and healthcare settings, removing self-isolation rules for those who have received two vaccines, and getting rid of track and trace rules for restaurants and pubs.

READ MORE: Call for Westminster to publish impact of planned cuts to Covid support

However, the announcement has come in for criticism with many describing it as reckless and pointing out that there was no mention of the risks of long Covid.

Scottish Government adviser and professor of global public health at Edinburgh University Devi Sridhar said: "New UK health minister saying COVID is like flu. Same position 18 months into the pandemic. We didn’t have to vaccinate the entire adult population against flu, or do mass community testing, or have lockdowns bc hospitals full. I don’t understand this analogy."

Dr Zubaida Haque, who is a member of the independent Sage group, pointed out that the reason for long lockdowns in the UK is due to UK Government failings.

She said: "Someone needs to explain to Health Sec Sajid Javid, that THE REASON we have had long lockdowns is because his govt have repeatedly failed in suppressing the virus and taking action early. And letting the virus rip & cases rise will mean MORE lockdowns and restrictions; not less."

She added: "While Sajid Javid is telling us that [there] are 'compelling health arguments' for removing ALL covid safeguards on July 19, we currently have highest daily cases than whole of EU put together and we are on course for ~100K cases a day by July 19."

Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr highlighted the similarity between Javid's pronouncement and the concept of "doublespeak" in George Orwell's 1984.

She wrote: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Health is the deliberate mass infection of an entire nation’s children with a novel & mutating virus with unknown long term consequences."

Slamming the "ideologically-based decisions", Cadwalladr said that Javid is "condemning tens of thousands of children to long Covid", a condition that is not yet fully understood.

A recent survey showed that as many as two million adults in England have had some form of longer-lasting symptoms after having the coronavirus.

The React study shows about a third (37%) of people who report they have coronavirus symptoms have one or more symptoms that persist for at least 12 weeks with some experiencing more than one symptom.

Tiredness and shortness of breath were some of the most common symptoms that persisted after