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LONDON: A professor who has advised the British government on its COVID-19 testing program said on Saturday (October 17) that a brief nationwide shutdown was needed due to “tearing” infection levels in parts of England.
As a second wave of infections accelerates, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has favored local restrictions in areas where cases are increasing, in hopes of protecting the economy by allowing less-affected regions to remain open.
Johnson reiterated on Friday his belief in a localized approach rather than a new temporary national lockdown, even as half the UK population lives in places subject to enhanced COVID-19 restrictions.
But John Bell, a royal professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the current measures did not go far enough and called for a brief but strict national shutdown, known as a “circuit breaker.”
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“I can see very few ways to get over this without some kind of circuit breaker, because the numbers are really impressive in some parts of the country and I think it will be quite difficult to get to the top. This only bites into the edges,” he told BBC radio. .
Bell said schools and colleges may also have to close for a short period.
“If in the end we have to take the kids out for two weeks, calm everything down, and then start, ideally integrate it into a much more rigorous testing regimen, then maybe that’s what we need to do,” he added.
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On Friday, more data suggested that England was still seeing a sharp increase in cases. The National Statistics Office’s Infection Survey said there had been 27,900 new cases per day on average over the past week.
On Tuesday, the opposition British Labor Party called for a two to three week shutdown in England, although it wants schools to remain open.
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