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The grim faces of Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance told the story even before they began to speak: Christmas was over. When Boris Johnson sat in the Cabinet Room at 5 p.m. on Friday, Whitty and Vallance appeared on the Zoom monitors and began collecting increasingly alarming data on the new mutant strain of the coronavirus.
In what one participant described as “ a horror movie script, ” the shocked-looking prime minister was told that the variant was 70 percent more transmissible and was already responsible for the majority of new infections in the London hotspot. and the southeast.
Despite the little bit of positive news, which was not thought to be more likely to kill the sick or that vaccines were ineffective, the message from the scientists was clear: without rapid and draconian action, the critical number ‘R ‘to which the virus spreads would increase. up to 0.9.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears during a conference to tell people in the south of England that his Christmas plans would have to be canceled.
When the committee heard that infections had increased in London by 66 percent over the past two weeks, and that 60 percent of those in the capital were due to the new variant, Johnson stopped arguing the point and turned to the action I needed. to be taken. In the photo on the left, Patrick Vallance. Right, Chris Whitty
In what one participant described as “a script from a horror movie,” the shocked-looking prime minister was told that the variant was 70% more transmittable. In the photo, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance
With the rate currently between 1.1 and 1.3 in the Southeast, it would be a few weeks before each infected person transmitted the infection to two other people, an exponential increase that could soon overwhelm the country’s intensive care capacity.
Johnson immediately convened a meeting of Covid-0, the cabinet subcommittee that he chairs and includes high-level colleagues such as Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove. In delivering the sad news, the prime minister made a valiant attempt to stick with his policy of lifting restrictions on domestic mixing during Christmas.
But when the committee heard that infections had risen in London by 66 percent over the past two weeks, and that 60 percent of those in the capital were due to the new variant, Johnson stopped arguing the point and turned to to action that needed to be taken.
Covid-O met again yesterday morning to allow ministers such as Transportation Secretary Grant Shapps and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to bypass the restrictions and exemptions that applied to their departments. After firing them, Johnson called Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer to brief him on the measures that were being introduced, while Gove did the same for Welsh Prime Minister Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland.
Boris Johnson (pictured) immediately called a meeting of Covid-0, the cabinet subcommittee that he chairs and contains high-level colleagues such as Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove
When he held the cabinet meeting at 1pm yesterday, Johnson, who declared only on Wednesday that it would be ‘inhumane’ to ‘cancel Christmas’, struck a grim note when he said:’ I can probably say by my voice that no. in any of this. But I don’t see that we have a choice.
When Johnson laid out the chilling data and said the World Health Organization had been reported, the usual skeptics of the shutdown remained largely silent, aside from a minister, who expressed concern that scientists may be manipulating the figures. to crush the country and turn it into another devastator. emergency shutdown.
The minister might have been mostly alone inside the cabinet yesterday, but not on the conservative back benches where skeptics have been muttering about a ‘new Project Fear’ since Hancock first referenced the mutant strain last Monday.
Their reservations have been shared by isolated voices within the scientific establishment, who have argued that it is impossible to form an accurate impression of the situation based on statistics from a few days.
But Johnson was adamant: it would be irresponsible to ignore the data, despite the shock at Christmas, because he had insisted from the beginning of the crisis that he would be “guided by science.”
It was agreed that existing Level 3 areas in London and the South East should be moved to a new Level 4, an effective return to the lockdown, and that plans to allow households to mingle in those areas over Christmas should be abandoned, a measure It affects a third of the population of England. In the remaining areas, a Christmas appearance would be maintained by allowing three households to mingle on Christmas Day alone.
It was another 180-degree turn in the government’s often chaotic handling of the pandemic, but one that, according to number 10, had become inevitable.
The measures affected all cabinet ministers around the virtual table: For Shapps, he faces the collapse of the travel plans of millions of people who are forced to stay home unexpectedly during Christmas.
Travel abroad has also turned into chaos: Anyone at level 4 who has booked a holiday abroad, as the measures currently stand, will break the law if they decide to continue.
And since the mutant strain is currently confined to the UK, it is widely expected at number 10 that foreign governments will soon put British travelers on a banned list to prevent the new strain from being ‘seeded’ in their communities. Sunak, who last week extended his licensing plan to April, realizes he faces even more pressure to rescue businesses that have been forced to close in the life span leading up to Christmas.
The cabinet’s sadness deepened with the grim ‘optics’ of deploying the legal power of the state to prevent families from being seen at the most emotionally charged time of year.
Although Johnson’s aides insist there will be no “cops jumping over garden gates” on Christmas Day, it is not something the conservative libertarian leader will enjoy seeing on his political CV.
