Lockdown starts to ‘save the NHS’
MPS yesterday gave the green light to today’s new four-week coronavirus lockdown for England, after Boris Johnson warned of an “existential threat” to the NHS without action to curb the spread of the disease and save the service.
From today, pubs, restaurants and nonessential shops were again forced to close their doors after the Commons voted by 516 to 38 – a Government majority of 478 – for the new restrictions.
The move came as the NHS in England went into its highest alert level – level 4 – at midnight last night amid a continuing rise in coronavirus patients needing hospital care.
NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said the service already had “22 hospitals’ worth” of Covid-19 patients and now faced a “serious situation ahead”.
With Labour supporting the new lockdown restrictions the Government’s majority was never in doubt.
However, Mr Johnson faced an angry backlash from some Tory MPS – led by former prime minister Theresa May – alarmed at the economic impact of the controls as well as the curtailment of civil liberties.
In the Commons, the Prime Minister sought to reassure MPS that the measures – which are due to expire on December 2 – should enable shops and businesses to reopen in time for the run-up to Christmas.
He acknowledged, however, that it would depend on getting the R number – the reproduction rate of the virus – back down below 1.
“We will by December 2, I hope very much, be able to get this country going again, to get businesses, to get shops open again in the run-up to Christmas,” he said.
“But that depends on us all doing our bit now to make sure that we get the R down. I’ve no doubt that we can, and that we’ll be able to go forward from December 2 with a very, very different approach.”
Although Labour voted with the Government yesterday, leader Sir Keir Starmer criticised the Prime Minister for resisting earlier calls for a new lockdown.
He said that it would be “madness” for ministers simply to return to the previous tiered localised restrictions if the infection rate was still going up on December 2.
Meanwhile, Sir Simon said GPS will be put on standby from December should a vaccine become available before Christmas.
However, he said the “expectation” was that any vaccination programme would begin in the new year – pending positive results from the vaccine clinical trials.
The head of the UK’S vaccines taskforce has said data from the vaccine trials at the University of Oxford and Astrazeneca and Pfizer with Biontech could be available this year.
But scientists behind some of the vaccine projects warned that vaccines may not mean that people can immediately “get back to normal”.