England facing a month of agony
Locked down tight
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson plunged England into its third national lockdown on Monday in a desperate bid to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed by soaring numbers of COVID-19 cases.
People will be required to stay at home for all but a handful of reasons until at least February 15 in the strictest set of restrictions since last March.
The laws come into effect on Wednesday and parliament will be recalled on the same day.
“The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet,” the Prime Minister said in a televised address. “I know how tough this is. I know how frustrated you are. I know you’ve had more than enough of government guidance about defeating this virus. But now more than ever you must pull together.”
He promised that the country was entering the final phase of the struggle and held out hope of an “accelerating” vaccination program, pledging an average of two million jabs a week from now until the middle of next month.
“With every jab, we are tilting the odds against COVID and in favour of the British people,” he said.
Primary and secondary schools as well as colleges in England moved to remote learning, and Mr Johnson said it would not be fair for this year’s GCSE and A-level exams to go ahead as planned.
However, nurseries and other early-years childcare centres can remain open. Students are being told not to return to campus for the new term but to study from home until next month at least.
The lockdown will bring a
return of the limited set of exemptions to the stay-at-home orders that include shopping for essential supplies, medical care, work if it is impossible to do from home and exercise.
Those deemed extremely vulnerable are being advised to shield again, and the government has revived its original message: “Stay at Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.” The restrictions came as: The number of new cases in the UK in the past 24 hours reached 58,784, an increase of 50 per cent on the seven-day average. There were 407 deaths, up by a fifth in a week.
The first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs were administered, but millions of vials were said to have been held up in a testing backlog.
Leaked NHS data showed more patients waited longer than 12 hours in casualty departments last month than at any point in the past decade.
Margaret Ferrier, the former SNP MP who travelled between Glasgow and London with the virus, was charged with reckless conduct.
Before the lockdown announcement, Downing Street presented statistics that it says shows urgent action is needed, including 26,626 COVID-19 patients in hospitals.