Leicester lockdown as virus flares
Print Edition
Britain imposed a stringent lockdown on the city of Leicester yesterday following a local flare-up of COVID-19 cases just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson vows to shake Britain’s economy out of its coronavirus-introduced crisis.
The United Kingdom has been one of the world’s worst-hit areas, with more than 54,000 suspected deaths, though infections have been waning in recent weeks.
However, in Leicester, in the eastern Midlands of England, the seven-day infection rate was 135 cases per 100,000 people, three times higher than the next highest city. Leicester accounted for 10 percent of all positive cases in England in the past week, the government said.
“We will be bringing forward a legal change very shortly, in the next couple of days, because some of the measures that we’ve unfortunately had to take in Leicester will require a legal underpining,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Asked if some aspects of the lockdown would be enforced by the police, he said: “Yes, in some cases.”
The Leicester lockdown was overshadowing a major speech by Johnson yesterday in Dudley, just 80 kilometers away, in which he will detail plans to rebuild the British economy after it was battered by the coronavirus lockdown.
Hancock said the government was still analyzing the exact reasons behind the rise of cases in Leicester.
But mayor Peter Soulsby said it had been hard to get details. “It’s obviously going to be quite a challenge enforcing it,” he said. “Policing it is going to be something of a challenge until we know actually what the area is to be policed.”
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