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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a press conference starting at 6am.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a press conference at 6am Sunday morning (New Zealand time) alongside his top scientific advisers. It is expected to announce a new national lockdown for England to stop the resurgence of the coronavirus.
Scientists warned that Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the UK could soon exceed levels seen at the spring peak of the outbreak. Johnson’s office said the press conference would follow a cabinet meeting to discuss “the government’s response to the coronavirus.”
The meeting occurred after the London Times reported that Johnson could announce a one-month shutdown as early as Monday. The government said early Saturday that no final decision had been made, but Johnson was under increasing pressure to act quickly.
London School of Hygiene epidemiologist John Edmunds, a member of the government’s scientific advisory group, said on Saturday that the cases were “significantly above” the reasonable worst-case scenario produced by the modelers.
“It’s really unthinkable now, unfortunately, that we don’t count our deaths in the tens of thousands from this wave,” Edmunds told the BBC. “The problem is, will it be tens of thousands if we take radical action now or will it be tens of thousands if we don’t?”
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Johnson has introduced a system of local restrictions for England based on infection levels. But scientists say it has not been enough to control the increase in Covid-19 cases, and Britain is likely to join other European countries such as France, Germany and Belgium in imposing a second blockade.
Any new lockdown would likely see nonessential businesses shut down and people would mostly stay at home, although schools would remain open.
The measures would apply to England. Other parts of the UK established their own public health measures, with Wales and Northern Ireland already effectively locked up and Scotland under a series of strict regional restrictions.
Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Saturday that, for now, the people of Scotland should not travel to or from England “except for essential purposes.”
Lucy Powell, a business spokeswoman for the opposition Labor Party, accused the government of “wavering” and said the country now faces a longer lockdown than if Johnson had acted earlier.
Business owners who have struggled to recover since the first shutdown was eased said the impact of the new closures would be devastating.
A government program that paid the salaries of millions of employees without permission during the pandemic ended on Saturday, replaced by less generous measures that are likely to bring an increase in unemployment.
Alastair / AP Scholarship
Covid-19 cases are increasing across Europe.
“People have borrowed to the hilt and spent money to get Covid safe,” said Kate Nicholls, from the hospitality UK restaurant and bar industry group. “There is no spare capacity in the tank to be able to finance a blockade, even for three or four weeks.”
The UK is recording more than 20,000 new coronavirus infections a day, and government statistics say the true figure is much higher. The Office for National Statistics estimated on Friday that 1 in 100 people in England, more than half a million, had the virus in the week ending October 23. On Saturday the country is likely to surpass one million confirmed cases since the outbreak began.
The UK has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe at over 46,000.
Jeremy Farrar, director of the medical research charity Wellcome Trust and an advisor to the government, urged swift action to prevent many more deaths.
“The best time to act was a month ago, but these are very difficult decisions that we would all like to avoid,” he tweeted. “The second best moment is now”.
