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Good Morning. Last night No. 10 sent a short press release with the title “CSA and CMO to give information about the coronavirus.” In Whitehall, it often happens that the smoother the title, the more meaningful the announcement, and today should be very important. CSA is Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and CMO is England’s Chief Medical Officer. Professor Chris Whitty (also the UK government’s top medical adviser), and they will tell the nation how serious they think the risk is from the recent surge in coronavirus cases.
According to the press release, Whitty will say:
The trend in the UK is going in the wrong direction and we are at a critical point in the pandemic.
We are analyzing the data to see how to manage the spread of the virus before a very challenging winter period.
Whitty and Vallance are speaking ahead of an announcement expected soon, possibly tomorrow, about the imposition of new measures to counter the spread of the coronavirus. But Boris Johnson will not join them, and it appears that while ministers have been discussing what new measures might be imposed, both nationally and locally, no final decisions have been made yet.
How bad could it get? The Times Splash (paywall) today, which attributes its reporting to an anonymous high-ranking government figure, begins: “Britain faces another six months of ‘very difficult’ lockdown restrictions, Downing Street warned.” No 10 has downplayed this, but it’s worth remembering that right at the beginning of the first lockdown, government scientists were emphasizing that it was unlikely to be anything unique. Here’s what SPI-MO, the Pandemic Influenza Modeling Scientific Group, a subcommittee of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said in a statement (pdf) on March 16, the day the reports were announced. soft lock measures:
It was agreed that a policy of alternating between periods of more and less stringent social distancing measures could be plausibly effective in keeping the number of critical care cases within capacity. These should be in place for at least the better part of a year. Under such a policy, at least half of the year would be spent under the strictest social distancing measures.
The Imperial College document (pdf) released the same day (the one that persuaded Johnson to commit to the lockdown) included this graphic showing a possible scenario for the future involving the imposition of restrictions, then lifted, and then re-imposed (a as cases increase) running until the end of 2021.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.35 am: Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, delivers a speech at the Labor online conference. Like my colleague Heather stewart Dodds will reportedly accuse the Conservatives of wasting billions of pounds of public money through failed outsourcing and poorly designed work schemes.
11am: Professor Chris Whitty, the government’s top medical adviser, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s top scientific adviser, hold a briefing.
12:00 h: Downing Street plans to hold its briefing in the lobby.
12:15 pm: The Scottish government plans to hold its daily briefing on the coronavirus.
3.30 pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is expected to give a Commons statement on the coronavirus.
4 pm: Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow Home Secretary, delivers a speech at the Labor online conference.
After 4:30 pm: MEPs debate amendments to the Internal Market Bill.
Politics Live has doubled as the UK’s coronavirus live blog for some time and given the way the Covid crisis overshadows everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we will also cover political stories that do not belong to Covid, and where they seem most important and interesting, they will take precedence.
Here’s our global coronavirus live blog.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, put “Andrew” somewhere and you’re more likely to find it. I try to answer questions and if they are of general interest I will post the question and answer it above the line (ATL), although I cannot promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to get my attention quickly, it’s probably best to use Twitter. I’m in @ AndrewGorrión.
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