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The Liverpool city region will be at the “very high” Covid alert level as of Wednesday, Boris Johnson announced.
Confirming a new three-level lockdown system, the prime minister said pubs, bars and gambling shops will close on Merseyside.
Most areas in England will be on “medium” alert, with measures such as the rule of six, but areas with local restrictions on domestic mixing are automatically on “high” alert.
The prime minister said that all outlets, schools and universities will remain open.
It came after England’s deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said that the growth in Covid cases was a “national phenomenon” and that “things are heating up” in areas beyond the north of England. .
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Boris Johnson told MPs that restricting interactions between people would save lives and help prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: “This is not how we want to live our lives, but this is the narrow path we have to travel between the social and economic trauma of a total shutdown and the enormous human cost and indeed economic of an irrepressible epidemic “.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was “skeptical” about whether the government has a plan to control the virus and increasingly feels that Johnson is “several steps behind the curve.”
“The question today is whether the restrictions announced by the prime minister can bring the country off the brink,” he said.