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England could be subjected to a new national lockdown next week, new reports suggest.
Everything could be closed except essential stores and educational settings, such as kindergartens, schools and universities, and the measures will remain in effect until December 1, the Daily Mail and the Times reported.
The prime minister is expected to make an announcement on Monday in hopes that the measures can be relaxed by Christmas.
Reports suggest that government scientific advisers are calling for a nationwide shutdown in a bid to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
However, no final decision is believed to have been made and stricter regional measures such as the introduction of Level 4 are also being considered, but ministers are said to be in favor of a national policy.
The Times reported that a high-level government source said the measures were under discussion and that no final decision had been made.
“The data is really bad,” the source was quoted as saying.
“We are seeing a rise in coronavirus across the country and hospitals are struggling to cope. There has been a change in our position. ”
The newspaper reported that Johnson met with Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock to discuss the “alarming” new data from the NHS on Thursday.
On Friday, Nottingham’s director of public health said the county’s Covid-19 admissions are 40% more than at the peak of the first wave in April.
While in South Yorkshire, hospitalized coronavirus patients are approaching twice the levels of the first wave, according to the mayor of the region.
Sheffield City Region Mayor Dan Jarvis said 700 people with coronavirus are being treated at hospitals in Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley compared to 414 in the spring.
So far, Johnson has resisted pressure to reintroduce restrictions nationwide, despite calls for a “circuit breaker” to stem the rise in coronavirus cases.
But new data released on Friday suggested that around 570,000 people a week are infected with Covid-19 across England, prompting new calls from scientists for stricter restrictions.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) infection survey found that cases “continued to rise sharply” in the week ending October 23, with an estimated 568,100 people in households becoming infected.
Scientific advisers at the top of the government believe that it is now too late for a two-week national circuit breaker to have sufficient effect and a longer national lockdown is needed to bring the virus’s reproduction number, or R-value, below. one’s. .
They also warn that the UK’s second wave of coronavirus is on its way to overcome the “reasonable worst case scenario” of 85,000 deaths.
All parts of England are on track to eventually end Level 3 restrictions, they believe, while deaths could reach 500 a day in weeks and continue like that for three months.
In a document from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), dated October 8 and leaked to The Spectator earlier this week, it warned that a continued increase in hospital admissions means that “if there are no decisive interventions, continued growth would have the potential to overwhelm the NHS, including the continued delivery of non-Covid treatments. ”
A separate consensus statement from the Pandemic Influenza Scientific Group on Modeling, Operational Subgroup (SPI-MO) dated October 14 said that “combined estimates from six SPI-MO models suggest that there are between 43,000 and 74,000 new infections per day in England”.
In September, the government’s top scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned that without action, the UK could see 50,000 coronavirus cases a day by mid-October and more than 200 deaths a day.
Over the past week, deaths averaged 230 per day, while the latest data from the ONS suggests more than 50,000 cases per day.
In a tweet, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth called on Johnson to “get this crisis under control.”
“Boris Johnson needs to show some real leadership and control this crisis,” Ashworth tweeted.
“I should have followed the advice of the scientists and used half the school term for a limited time on the circuit to reduce infections and save lives.”
On Friday night, several experts called for a closure.
Professor Christina Pagel, a member of Sage, UCL, said another national shutdown is “inevitable.”
“Since it is inevitable, I think the sooner you do it, the faster it will be over and the more lives you will save,” he told Sky News.
Professor Jeremy Farrar, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), has said: “To control # COVID19, we have to act now. The virus will not wait for us. ”
The infectious disease expert wrote on Twitter: “Nobody ‘wants’ a lockdown, including myself. Full and generous support for individuals and businesses is a crucial part of making it work.
“But we have quickly overcome the worst of reasonable cases, we are further ahead in this phase of the epidemic than many have assumed.
“The best time to act was a month ago, but these are very difficult decisions that we would all like to avoid. The second best moment is now “.
Another Sage member and chair of the Royal Society of Medicine’s epidemiology and public health section, Professor Gabriel Scally, said on Twitter: “You may be very concerned about the impact of the pandemic on mental health and the treatment of Covid conditions, and still believes that the strictest measures are the best and most necessary course of action.
“The more the virus spreads, the less capacity the NHS has.”
On Friday, the government said a new 274 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19While in the UK another 24,405 laboratory confirmed cases were recorded.
New figures from the ONS, based on 609,777 swab tests taken regardless of whether people have symptoms or not, show that the highest rates are in the North West and in the Yorkshire and the Humber.
Rates remain high in the Northeast as well, but the ONS said they have now stabilized and “now there is a bigger gap with the other two northern regions.”
Analysis of the data by the Palestinian Authority news agency shows that the estimated percentage of people in North East England who tested positive went from 0.57% for the period 12-25 September to 1.41% for the period from September 26 to October 9.
But the rate of increase appears to be stabilizing, the latest figure being 1.43% for the October 10-23 period.
In contrast, the Northwest has gone from 1.57% from September 26 to October 9 to 2.47% in the period from October 10 to 23.
The lowest rates are in the South East, South West and East of England, while there has been growth in all age groups over the last two weeks.
Sage said on Friday that the reproduction number, or R-value, of the coronavirus transmission for the whole of the United Kingdom is between 1.1 and 1.3, which represents the situation of the last weeks.
Last week, the group said the R number was slightly higher between 1.2 and 1.4.
