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Government plans to abandon COVID self-isolation by the end of February "go against the fundamental principles of public health", scientists have told Sky News.

At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Boris Johnson announced that "provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue" he wants to remove the legal requirement to isolate by the end of this month.

Experts have warned the move "is not guided by science", will leave unvaccinated schoolchildren and the clinically vulnerable at risk, and result in more people developing long COVID.

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It comes as Mr Johnson resists calls by members of his own party to resign over the police investigation into allegations of rule-breaking parties during lockdown across Downing Street and Whitehall.

Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds, told Sky News: "This is crazy. It goes against all the fundamental principles of public health.

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"It seems that the government has completely abandoned any concern about people becoming infected.

"And for a great number of people that may well be okay. But a considerable minority of our population can't just move on from this.

"This is about clinically vulnerable people, the elderly, and children in schools, who are not yet vaccinated.

"It's also about long COVID, which doesn't seem to have been factored into this at all."

The most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates suggest that 1.3 million people in the UK - the equivalent of 2% of the population - have been suffering COVID symptoms for more than four weeks.

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, says that the increasingly high prevalence of long COVID, particularly among young people, makes comparisons between COVID and flu invalid.

"Long COVID is not a trivial disease," she told Sky News. "People are still comparing COVID with flu, but since when did flu cause symptoms for more than six months in hundreds of thousands of people?"

Case rates still 'huge'

Dr Gurdasani also warns that case levels, although declining, are still "huge".

Official government data shows infection levels down by 22% in the past week.

But the most recent ONS Infection Survey, thought to capture a truer picture of total cases in the community, indicated that more than 2.8 million people in England - one in 19 - had coronavirus in the week to 5 February.

"We're also still seeing around 1,800 deaths a week," she said.

"The message from the government here is that we accept this level of infection and death.

"The idea of living with the virus is fine, but there are different ways of living with it than just shutting your eyes and pretending it's not happening."

Professor Paul Hunter, of the University of East Anglia's Norwich School of Medicine, struck a more optimistic tone.

Asked about the timing of the plans, he said that "in some ways we are getting to that point, as reported case numbers have been falling".

Timing 'bit of a gamble' given Omicron sub-variant

But he still described it as "quite a surprise" and a "bit of a gamble".

He said that there are still issues around the new sub-variant of Omicron - BA.2 - which is causing cases to rise in parts of the UK - meaning it could be "a little bit too early".

The government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has repeatedly warned that new variants of the virus are highly likely and would be accompanied by high rates of cases. It has also continually stressed the waning efficacy of current vaccines to prevent infection, disease, hospitalisation and death.

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The prime minister's spokesman said after his announcement that although it would no longer be a legal requirement, "in the same way that someone with flu, we wouldn't recommend they go to work, we would never recommend anyone goes to work when they have an infectious disease" such as COVID.

He also denied reports free lateral flow tests (LFTs) would be scrapped when the rules on isolation end - and that would only come "at the right point".

Asked when she would recommend dropping isolation rules, Dr Gurdasani said only when the UK has invested in more "long-term variant-resistant precautions" such as ventilation, in schools, transport and other public spaces, and high-quality masks.

Dr Griffin said the government's previous "data not dates" approach would be more appropriate.

"We need to get deaths under control," he said. "We need to get hospitalisations down and we need to maintain surveillance of the virus."

Professor remains 'optimistic'

However, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, Mark Woolhouse, told Sky News he remains "optimistic" about the possible end of legal restrictions.

He said that during the course of the pandemic people have actually adapted their behaviour to be more cautious and careful than predicted, which is "one of the reasons why we haven't seen major resurgences so far since restrictions have been lifted".

And this change in behaviour could be something that continues in the future.

"This has been an event, over the last two years, on a truly historical scale and it is going to leave long-term effects behind of all kinds," he said.

"I think this behavioural change we have been talking about will be one of them. The only note of caution I would like to add is that actually throughout this pandemic, actually predicting what people will do has turned out to be rather difficult."

He added that the introduction of self-testing seems to have been "very effective" in helping to control the Omicron wave.

"I strongly suspect that those who are willing to test themselves are also prepared to modify their behaviours should they test positive," he added.

"So I very much hope again that the change in the legal requirements... will not lead to a drastic change in behaviour across all of society. I'm optimistic about that."