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LONDON (BLOOMBERG, REUTERS) – British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned that the new mutant strain of coronavirus is “out of control” and suggested that parts of England will be stuck in the new highest level of restrictions until a vaccine is deployed. .
More than 16 million Britons are now required to stay home, as a lockdown on London and south-east England went into effect on Sunday (December 20) and the government scrapped plans to relax rules on socializing at Christmas. in an attempt to control the fast. -sowing a new variant of the virus.
The measures prohibit mixing of households in the capital and the South East, and restrict socializing only on Christmas Day in the rest of England. Residents across the country were told to stay in their local areas.
Hancock said the new strain “was out of control.”
“We have to get it under control and the way that we can do that, the only way that you can do it, is by restricting social contact,” the Sunday show told Sky’s Sophy Ridge.
“Cases have absolutely skyrocketed, so we have a long way to go,” he said. “I think it will be very difficult to keep it under control until the vaccine has been released.”
People in the new so-called Tier 4 areas “should behave as if they do,” he said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had originally planned to ease the pandemic rules for five days during the holidays, but made an abrupt change in tactics after emergency talks about the virus mutation with his top officials.
Emerging scientific evidence suggests that the new variant, which Hancock said also appeared in Australia and continental Europe, may spread significantly faster than previous strains in circulation and is behind a large spike in infections in recent days.
Most of the Sunday papers carried stories of people canceling Christmas plans. Conservative Member of Parliament Mark Harper, who represents a group opposed to the shutdown measures, urged the government to summon lawmakers from their vacation so that a vote can take place.
Hancock said a vote will take place in January.
“We made the compromise without knowing that there was going to be a new variant that would spread much faster,” he said of the original plans. He said there is “no evidence” that the new strain, VUI-202012/01, is milder than the original virus.
He said that as of Saturday morning, 350,000 people had been vaccinated, with the ambition to reach 500,000 by the end of the weekend.
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 to break those plans, ”he said at a press conference.
Shortly after Johnson informed 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 halt the increase in cases. “One of the reasons we incorporated the 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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