Latest England lockdown to last at least 6 weeks
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ENGLAND is entering a third national lockdown that will last at least six weeks, as authorities struggle to stem a surge in COVID-19 infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals around the UK.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a tough new stay-at-home order for England that took effect at midnight yesterday and won’t be reviewed until at least mid-February. Few in England expect any relief until after the traditional late February school break.
The semi-autonomous executives in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have imposed similar measures.
Johnson announced the lockdown after the chief medical officers of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales raised the UK-wide COVID-19 threat assessment to the highest level. The health system is already under “immense pressure,” and there is a risk that the National Health Service in some areas may be “overwhelmed” within 21 days, they said.
The new measures are similar to those imposed last spring, with people being told to work from home unless it’s impossible to do so, and to leave home only for exercise or essential trips such as grocery shopping. Schools across England were ordered to close their doors and shift to online instruction. University students won’t return to campus until at least mid-February.
Beginning today, all nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed in England. Restaurants will be allowed to offer takeout services only.
Finance minister Rishi Sunak announced a new package of business grants worth 4.6 billion pounds (US$6.2 billion) to help keep people in jobs and firms afloat until measures are relaxed gradually.
New COVID-19 infections have soared in recent weeks as public health officials struggled to contain a new variant, which the government says is 50 percent to 70 percent more contagious. The number of confirmed new daily infections in the past seven days jumped 50 percent from the previous week, and coronavirus-related deaths rose 21 percent in the same period.
Britain has reported some 75,500 virus-related deaths, one of the highest tallies in Europe.
Johnson said the restrictions were needed to protect the hard-pressed NHS as the new variant of coronavirus sweeps across Britain. On Monday, hospitals in England were treating 26,626 COVID-19 patients, 40 percent more than during the first peak in mid-April.
“The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet, but I really do believe that we are entering the last phase of the struggle,” Johnson said in an address to the nation on Monday night. “Because with every jab that goes into our arms, we are tilting the odds against COVID and in favor of the British people.”
Many UK hospitals have already been forced to cancel elective surgeries and the strain of responding to the pandemic may soon delay cancer surgery and limit intensive care services for patients without COVID-19.
Intensive care units are full and spilling over, said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst of the King’s Fund, a health and social care think-tank. “It’s not hyperbole to say that the (NHS) is going through probably the toughest time in living memory,” he said.
Public health officials hope the new lockdown will reduce the strains on the NHS while they roll out a national vaccination program that targets older people, health-care workers and those with conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Britain has approved vaccine shots from two different manufacturers so far, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The government hopes to give a first dose of vaccine to everyone in its top four priority groups, or 13 million people, by the middle of February, Johnson said. But senior minister Michael Gove urged caution in terms of when that might translate into an easing of restrictions.
“We’ll be able to review the progress that we’ve made on the 15th of February ... and we hope that we’ll be able to progressively lift restrictions after that, but what I can’t do is predict, nobody can predict with accuracy what we will be able to relax and when,” he said.
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