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England could be subjected to strict nationwide lockdown restrictions next week under plans the British prime minister is reportedly considering.
Boris Johnson will announce the new measures at a news conference on Monday, The Times said, which could see everything closed except essential stores and educational settings.
The restrictions could be introduced on Wednesday and will remain in effect until December 1, according to the newspaper.
However, final decisions are not believed to have been made and stricter regional measures are also being considered, such as the introduction of Tier 4.
So far, Johnson has resisted pressure to reintroduce restrictions nationwide, despite calls for a “circuit breaker” to stem the rise in coronavirus cases.
But new data released on Friday suggested that around 570,000 people a week are infected with Covid-19 across England, prompting new calls from scientists for stricter restrictions.
The British Office for National Statistics (ONS) infection survey found that cases “continued to rise sharply” in the week ending October 23, with an estimated 568,100 people in households becoming infected.
Scientific advisers at the top of the UK government believe that it is now too late for a two-week national circuit breaker to have sufficient effect and a longer national lockdown is needed to boost the reproduction number, or R-value, of the virus. . below one.
All parts of England are on track to eventually end Tier 3 restrictions, they believe, while deaths could reach 500 a day in a matter of weeks.
UK government scientists are also confident that more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus are occurring in England every day.
It comes as official documents released by the British government show that a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on October 8 said that the number of infections and hospital admissions is “exceeding reasonable worst-case planning levels (RWCS ) at this time”. .
The document, which was released just days before the three-tier restrictions were announced, said that the death toll was also “very likely to exceed reasonable worst-case planning levels” in the next two weeks.
Sage documents leaked to The Spectator this week showed an RWCS of 85,000 deaths from Covid-19 through the end of March, with more than 500 deaths per day for 90 days at the peak.
Sage’s Oct. 8 document said a continued increase in hospital admissions means that “if there are no decisive interventions, continued growth would have the potential to overwhelm the NHS, including the continued delivery of non-Covid treatments.”
A separate consensus statement from the Pandemic Influenza Scientific Group on Modeling, Operational Subgroup (SPI-MO) dated October 14 said that “combined estimates from six SPI-MO models suggest that there are between 43,000 and 74,000 new infections per day in England”.
In September, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned that without action, the UK could see 50,000 coronavirus cases a day by mid-October and more than 200 deaths a day.
Over the past week, deaths averaged 230 per day, while the latest data from the ONS suggests more than 50,000 cases per day.
On Friday, the British government said another 274 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, while a further 24,405 laboratory-confirmed cases were recorded in the UK.
New figures from the ONS, based on 609,777 swab tests taken regardless of whether people have symptoms or not, show that the highest rates are in the North West and in the Yorkshire and the Humber.
Rates remain high in the Northeast as well, but the ONS said they have now stabilized and “now there is a bigger gap with the other two northern regions.”
Analysis of the data by the Palestinian Authority news agency shows that the estimated percentage of people in North East England who tested positive went from 0.57% for the period 12-25 September to 1.41% for the period from September 26 to October 9.
But the rate of increase appears to be stabilizing, the latest figure being 1.43% for the October 10-23 period.
In contrast, the Northwest has gone from 1.57% from September 26 to October 9 to 2.47% in the period from October 10 to 23.
The lowest rates are in the South East, South West and East of England, while there has been growth in all age groups over the last two weeks.
Sage said on Friday that the reproduction number, or R-value, of the coronavirus transmission for the whole of the United Kingdom is between 1.1 and 1.3, which represents the situation of the last weeks.
Last week, the group said the R number was slightly higher between 1.2 and 1.4.
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