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Boris Johnson has described an increase in coronavirus cases in France, which has plunged the country into a third national lockdown, as “very, very sad” and suggested that the UK could be affected in a few weeks.
Schools in France will be closed for at least three weeks and domestic travel will be banned for a month as President Emmanuel Macron struggles to control the rise in infections.
The blocking measures taken by Mr Macron are the latest recent actions by European leaders, amid a third wave of COVID-19 cases that extend over the continental continent.
France has entered a third national blockade
Speaking on a campaign visit to Hartlepool on Thursday, ahead of next month’s by-elections in the city, Johnson discussed how coronavirus Waves in Europe had soon traveled to the UK.
“I’m afraid you can see what is happening in France … and it is, you know, very, very sad because they are facing it again,” he told Hart Biologicals employees.
“All the experience of last year is that, when they get it in France and they do it badly, two or three weeks later it comes to us.”
Meanwhile, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said the Johnson government should remain “cautious” in lifting lockdown restrictions, as he suggested the UK could remain vulnerable to variants of COVID- 19 for the next year or two.
He said in a Royal Society of Medicine webinar: “What we don’t want is to be in a situation where we look back at six months and say ‘If only we had been a little more cautious for a month or two, we would. ” In fact, we’ve outgrown (vaccinated) the entire population, we would have understood a lot more, we would know how to deal with this, we would probably have some variant vaccines in stock. ‘
He added: “I don’t think that although this should be seen as an indefinite position, I think it is a question of probably the next year or two as we understand how to do this and find a way to respond quickly to variations.”
When he announced the latest blockade of France in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday night, Macron warned that the country would “lose control if we did not move now.”
Europe’s third wave of infections has already seen other countries like Italy and Germany tighten their COVID restrictions.
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Earlier on Thursday, a senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO) described the COVID vaccination programs of European countries as “unacceptably slow.”
Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, added: “As long as coverage remains low, we must apply the same public health and social measures that we have applied in the past, to compensate for schedule delays.”
EU leaders have come under heavy criticism for the slow deployment of COVID vaccines across the bloc, compared to Britain’s vaccination program.
According to the latest EU figures, as of March 28, 13.6% of adults in the bloc had received a first dose of the COVID vaccine, and 5.8% had received both doses.
In the UK, as of March 31, 59.1% of adults had received a first dose and 8.6% had received both doses.
