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Matt Hancock blasted lockdown skeptics in his own Conservative party as rebel MPs prepared to vote against new virus control measures in protest of the 10 p.m. curfew.
The conservative rebels are organizing a symbolic vote against one of the six restrictions that will be voted on in the House of Commons tonight. MPs are ready to pass the three-tier lockdown system, as well as a package of other measures, although they will be denied the opportunity to vote on the 10pm curfew separately.
In a private meeting Tuesday, The Guardian understands that MPs agreed to signal their anger with a vote against the final motion, which relates to the curfew, as well as other restrictions on public spaces and fines.
Many Conservative MPs have called for less stringent measures for fear of the economic impact of mass pub and restaurant closures.
Some have promoted the US-based Great Barrington statement, written by doctors and scientists who oppose current lockdown measures, including Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford.
The health secretary said he fundamentally disagreed with his premise of granting young people unlimited freedoms while advising the elderly and vulnerable to protect themselves.
“The Great Barrington statement rests on two central plains, and both are emphatically false. First, it says that if enough people get Covid, we will achieve herd immunity. This is not true, ”he said.
“Many infectious diseases never achieved herd immunity, such as measles, malaria, and flu… We should not be confident that we would ever achieve herd immunity to Covid, even if everyone contracted it.
“The second central claim is that we can segregate the elderly and the vulnerable on our path to herd immunity … somehow we cannot isolate the elderly and the vulnerable from risk, while everyone else returns to normal,” He said.
“It is not understandable or feasible, not when so many people live in intergenerational households where older people need caregivers… and when young people can suffer the facilitating impact of a prolonged Covid. Whenever we have seen cases among young people increase dramatically, we see cases among those over 60 inevitably increase thereafter, and we are not the type of country that abandons our vulnerable or simply locks them up. “
The Health Secretary warned that England’s three-tier system for local restrictions, announced Monday, could go beyond measures at the most severe tier 3.
“We are not ruling out further restrictions in the hospitality, leisure, entertainment or personal care sectors. But retail, schools and universities will remain open, ”he said.
Hancock also mounted a strong defense of the test-and-trace system, hours after a damning assessment of the NHS-test-and-trace was published by government scientific advisers (Sage). Experts cautioned that “low levels of engagement” with the system, coupled with testing delays and likely low self-isolation rates suggested that “this system is having a marginal impact on transmission at this time.”
The health secretary insisted that the system is significantly larger than in most other countries. “When I talk to my international colleagues, they asked me ‘how did they develop this capacity so quickly’ and that’s the truth,” he said.
“To argue that the huge system that is working so effectively with so many brilliant people working on it … is at the root of this challenge is, unfortunately, to lose the big picture, that sadly this virus is transmitted until we have a vaccine or a massive massive testing capability that no one has yet “
Downing Street said shortly before Hancock spoke that MPs would not get a separate vote on the mandatory 10 p.m. closing time for pubs and other hospitality businesses in England, a move that has received particular criticism from some MPs. including conservatives.
Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the decision to close at 10 p.m. would be part of a larger vote on the new alert system unveiled on Monday, making any rebellion less likely. “The 10pm cut-off time is an important part of the medium alert level measures,” the spokesman said.
Hancock said the curfew was having a significant effect on fighting the pandemic. “We have seen a reduction in late-night alcohol-related admissions … as a measure of how much people drink late at night and thus is evidence that there are fewer blends at high hours of the night, “he said.
The spokesperson denied the government was shelving scientific advice after it emerged that Sage’s advisory committee last month recommended a series of tougher measures, including a temporary “circuit breaker” lockout, but ministers rejected nearly all of them. The advices.
“The government receives advice from a wide range of scientific experts and also from economists, but it is up to the ministers to make decisions,” the spokesman said.
He insisted that the rules laid down in September, after Sage’s advice, had been effective: “If you look at the big picture, it’s clear that they are having a significant impact. The natural R rate of the coronavirus is 3, and in England, due to the measures we have, it is between 1.1 and 1.5. What we would urge the parliamentarians to do is to continue supporting the measures we have ”.
