According to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday, Britain wants to keep the capacity to detect novel coronavirus variants but must cut back on free testing as cases and fatalities decline.

Johnson will lay out plans for the country to "live with COVID" this week, amid reports that free coronavirus testing and some health research may be canceled.

The Prime Minister told the BBC that he wanted to ensure "we have capability to spot stuff and to snap back up as fast as we need to."

"We need resilience ... but for instance, on testing. We don't need to keep spending at a rate of 2 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) a month, which is what we were doing in January."

UK was the first European country to pass 100,000 COVID deaths as more than 150,000 people have died after catching the coronavirus in the UK, the government announced on January 9, in a tragic milestone for one of the worst affected countries in Europe.

At that time the government reported that deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID test have reached 150,057 since the start of the pandemic.