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Sunday 20 December 2020
Blockage due to virus mutation
Londoners cannot meet anyone for the festival.
A stricter lockdown has been in place in Greater London since today: fearing a mutation in the corona virus, Prime Minister Johnson is introducing a new alert level for around a third of the English population. Specifically, this means: Many people will have to spend Christmas alone.
In London and other areas of south-east England, there has been a harsh closure with curfews since Sunday night. The reason is the rapid spread of a new variant of the coronavirus. A total of around 16.4 million people are affected by the tightening, almost a third of England’s population. It is also not allowed to meet with members of other households during Christmas.
“As Prime Minister, it is my duty to make tough decisions and do what must be done to protect the people of this country,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Twitter Saturday night. Recently, he had rejected calls from academics and the opposition to enforce tougher measures during the holidays. Now millions of people have to celebrate alone. “We are sacrificing the possibility of seeing our loved ones this Christmas to have a better chance of saving their lives and being able to see them next Christmas,” Johnson said.
The prime minister warned that the new VUI2020 / 12/01 variant of the corona virus was spreading rapidly. The mutation is up to 70 percent more contagious than the previously known form. Many clinics in the south-east of England are almost in full swing and in many places unnecessary operations have been postponed. Johnson emphasized that there was no evidence that the vaccines were less effective against the new corona variant, that the disease was more severe, or that there were more deaths.
“Christmas bubbles” just for one day
To be sure, social life is shutting down in much of the country. In London and other regions of south-east England, the new higher level of corona 4 warning will apply in the future. People are only allowed to leave their homes for important reasons, for example to go to the doctor or to to work. All non-essential businesses such as gyms, hair salons, movie theaters and beauty salons must close. Residents cannot leave this area.
So far there have been three levels in England. It was planned that from December 23-27, up to three households across the country could come together to form fixed “Christmas bubbles.” This has now been limited to Christmas Day outside of Zone 4. The other parts of the country also significantly tightened the rules. In Wales, with more than 3.1 million inhabitants, there is also a harsh closure, Scotland has banned travel to other regions. It was not yet clear whether Northern Ireland would also introduce new measures. There, due to the high number of new infections, ambulances had recently jammed in front of emergency rooms, and ambulances from neighboring EU state Ireland helped.
Britain is one of the countries most affected in Europe by the Crown crisis. On Saturday, the number of infections rose by around 27,000 to a total of more than two million. Around 83,000 people have so far died with or from the Covid-19 lung disease. The government had started mass vaccination a good ten days ago. So far, about 350,000 people across the country have received funding from Mainz-based pharmaceutical company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer, as Johnson said.
