LONDON: London and south-east England may remain under tighter coronavirus restrictions for some time, Britain’s health minister suggested on Sunday, saying it was necessary to abandon plans to ease restrictions by Christmas to stop a new strain of rapid spread.
Under fire for imposing an effective lockdown on more than 16 million people just days before Christmas, Matt Hancock said Saturday’s decision was made quickly after new evidence showed that the new strain was responsible for escalating Covid cases. .
Prime Minister Boris Johnson broke plans on Saturday to allow three households to mingle indoors for five days during the holiday period, imposing new Level 4 limits similar to a recent nationwide shutdown in London and south-east England.
Hancock suggested that the stricter measures, which require around a third of England’s population to stay at home except for essential reasons like work, could be maintained until vaccines become more available.
“We have a long way to go to fix this,” Hancock told Sky News.
“Essentially, we have to implement that vaccine to keep people safe. Given how quickly this new variant spreads, it will be very difficult to keep it under control until we have the vaccine.”
Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition British Labor Party, said that while he supported the new measures, “once again the prime minister waited until 11 o’clock to make this decision.”
“The alarm bells have been ringing for weeks, but the prime minister decided to ignore them … He told the country to go ahead and have a merry Christmas … and yet three days later he tells millions of families that break those plans, “he told a news conference.
Ministers say the new strain, which has been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, is up to 70% more transmissible than the original, but that there is no evidence that it is more lethal or causes more serious disease.
Shortly after Johnson told the nation of the changes, some in London headed to the capital’s train stations to try to travel to see relatives over Christmas, and there were scenes of overcrowding, something Hancock called ” totally irresponsible. ”
He also said the government acknowledged that the economic impact of the new measures would be “severe” after the Confederation of British Industry called them “a real kick in the teeth” for many companies.
But speaking on the BBC, Hancock said a new national lockdown “was not necessarily” inevitable to stop the increase in cases.
“One of the reasons we incorporated strict travel movements into Level 4 … is to try and stop the spread of this new variant,” he told the “Andrew Marr Show.”
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