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Boris Jonson said that the country is at a “critical moment” and that measures “strong enough” are needed to stop the advance of the new variant of the coronavirus, considered more infectious.
“The government is giving instructions again to stay at home. They can only leave home for strict reasons provided by law, such as buying essential goods, working if they cannot do it at home, exercising, having medical assistance or escaping domestic violence, ”he announced in a television statement.
The UK recorded 58,784 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, a new daily high and the seventh consecutive day that the daily number of cases has exceeded 50,000 and 407 deaths, for a total of 75,431 deaths since inception. of the pandemic. .
In recent days, the daily average of cases increased by 50% and deaths by 21% compared to the previous seven days.
Parliament was summoned to meet extraordinarily on Wednesday and approve measures at the national level.
Due to the worsening of the epidemic situation, the British government had already determined a gradual restart of classes in England, but has been quick to keep schools closed for security reasons.
A YouGov poll published this afternoon indicated that around 79% of people strongly (51%) or somehow (28%) support the confinement hypothesis and only 16% strongly (7%) or slightly ( 9%) against.
On the other hand, 69% of British people think that the UK government is doing a terrible job in relation to schools, having announced that classes would resume this week and days later they would be withdrawn.
Before the announcement, the leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, had already told the BBC that the closure of schools was “inevitable” and that the prime minister must accelerate the vaccination program and assume the goal of four million vaccines. a week. until February.
“The virus is out of control. The tier system [de restrições] it is clearly not working and we all know that stricter measures are needed. (…) If we are going to ask the British people to be subject to severe national restrictions, and ask why this must happen immediately, then the contract must be for the vaccine program to move forward as quickly as possible. “
Starmer wants two million doses to start in January and double that in February.
