Facing new and potentially more contagious, different types of coronavirus, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is implementing lockdown measures, including a ban on holiday gatherings outside locked homes in London and the south-east of England.
After months of epidemics by the Johnson administration, and a week of assurances that Christmas would be allowed to be celebrated with three different homes – his critics are pointing to this latest response as further evidence of unstable leadership amid the crisis that nearly 2 million Britons Kovid-19 has been infected, and more than 67,000 people have died.
Johnson announced the measures after an emergency meeting on Saturday in which top government officials discussed new strains of the coronavirus, which the prime minister said were 70 percent more transmissible than previous versions. Some experts warn that more studies are needed to prove that change is indeed more transmissible.
“When a virus changes the way it attacks, we should change the way we defend ourselves.” “We have to act like the information is, because this is spreading so fast now.”
The announcement comes a week after the Covid-19 case rate in London nearly doubled and government officials said more than 60 per cent of cases in the city were attributed to the new strain, known as VUI-2012/01.
Chris Whitty, the country’s chief medical officer, said the strain was not considered more deadly than previous types.
Whitty said there is no existing evidence to suggest whether the new strain increases mortality or whether it affects vaccines and treatment.
The latest lockdown is the toughest in the country since March, and will take effect from Sunday. It will be reviewed again on 30 December, and it is an attempt to prevent the spread of new tensions beyond the south-east of England and its center, London, Johnson said on Saturday.
The new restrictions indicate that there is a ban on unusual travel defined as travel to work, education or health care in the region. Important shops and businesses, including jeans, salons and movie theaters, are ordered to close. The area has been placed in the newly created Tier 4 on the Tire Risk System of England, with Tier 1 designated as the place where the Covid-19 is under more control.
For weeks, Johnson has been struggling to balance the strong public health response to the rapidly growing number of cases with pressure not to hurt the economy further. As the Christmas holidays approached, he promised to lift the ban to allow five days of defeated fun.
“Give yourself a merry Christmas, but this year, alas, preferably very little Christmas,” he said last week.
This British Medical Journal And a joint editorial was published this week by the Health Services Journal, criticizing the government’s response to today’s date, saying that raising less holiday money could also lead to new infections that drown out the National Health Service.
“The government has been slow to introduce sanctions in the spring and again in the fall. “Now the decision of its spots should be reversed to allow household mixing,” the editorial read.
Now, however, Johnson seems to have taken that advice, to the point: areas outside the Tier 4 zone will be allowed to meet at Christmas – although, for one day, Johnson recently promised.
And overall, he said, the lockdown is part of an effort to slow down and agilely spread the curve to prevent stress in hospitals.
“Evidence without action suggests that infections will increase, hospitals will fill up and many more thousands will lose their lives,” Johns said Saturday.
Johnson was criticized for acting too slow during the epidemic
Other countries, including Italy, Riyadh and Germany, have also tightened sanctions in response to the holiday season. In France, bars and rest restaurants are ordered to close and curfews are in place; On Thursday, President Emanuel Macron announced that he had tested positive for the virus.
Notably, however, U.S. – The world’s worst coronavirus outbreak – has not tightened restrictions nationally. And Johnson’s decision was echoed by his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, on Saturday afternoon, as Trump wrote on Twitter, “Treatment can’t be worse than the problem!”
Trump Strict anti-lockdown is taking place in, giving decisions on efforts to curb the spread to state-level leaders. U.S. Is getting the best response, and about 300,000 Americans have died from coronavirus this year. Both the UK and US are in the top 10 countries for per capita death from Covid-19.
Johnson’s opponent in parliament, Labor leader Sir Kerr Starmer, also criticized the lockdown, but said the change in Johnson’s quick policy was confusing.
“I think the British public deserves more decisive leadership than that,” he said.
As Joan Silburner noted for Vox, Covid-19 cases have been steadily rising in the UK since September. Johnson’s critics, among them Starmer, have accused the prime minister of a series of missteps that have led to the country’s current crisis.
In these missteps, Silbner describes the poor management of the distribution and testing of PPEs at the onset of the epidemic and the implementation of contract tracing programs. NHS staff faced a severe shortage of masks and other equipment in the spring, and hundreds of health care workers died. Testing efforts were shortened in the spring, when a contact-tracing application was challenged over the summer, and again rolled out during a second attempt in September.
Silbner also described an attempt to prioritize meals in private rooms during the summer by subsidizing meals in August Gust, which was widely condemned by public health officials.
“In a word, it’s almonds,” said Lawrence Gostein, director of the WHO Collaboration Center on Georgetown University’s National and Global Health Law, about meal subsidies. “Between epidemics, it’s actually the direct opposite of what the evidence against health suggests.”
Despite these scatterbrains, Silbner describes a government that does not seem capable of learning from its mistakes. Johnson is now seen supporting inter-family visits during the Christmas holidays.
People are likely to get some new attention from the accustomed traditions they are using. But efforts to uphold Johnson’s tradition have failed because of the choices made weeks ago – and now the UK will have to face extreme measures as the government struggles to deal with significant spikes in the case load.
