Businesses thrown to wall because 14 extra people tested positive

Of all the statements made by government ministers and advisers over the past few months, few stand out like the words of the Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Whitty on Friday: “We have probably reached near the limit or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society… so what that means, potentially, is that if we wish to do more things in the future we may have to do less of some other things.”

Things we haven’t been doing this weekend – in spite of being promised that we would be able to do – include visiting casinos, bowling alleys, ice rinks, theatres and nail salons. Pubs, restaurants, gyms and many other businesses will now be looking over their shoulder in case they are ordered to shut up shop once more so that, say, to follow Whitty’s logic, schools can reopen on time in September.

Until Friday, restrictions on the UK economy were being lifted one by one. Barring a sudden and dramatic resurgence of Covid-19 there was little reason to assume that this would not continue – if not to the point of returning to full normality by Christmas, as the Prime Minister suggested a fortnight ago, then sometime next year.

Now, there is a very different message: for the indefinite future, the Government will not think twice about closing things down again at the faintest sign of an uptick in Covid-19 cases.

And a faint sign of an increase in cases is all there is. The week before last, the ONS reported 45 positive tests in a sample of 114,674. Last week, this climbed to 59 in a sample of 116,026. Businesses have been thrown to the wall for the sake of 14 extra people testing positive for the virus.

Moreover, any sign of an upturn is limited to recorded cases. There has been no increase in people being admitted to hospital for the virus: on the contrary, in the past two weeks the number of people occupying critical care beds has halved from 142 to 71.

If there is a resurgence, it is concentrated in a few local areas such as Blackburn, which had 91 new cases per 100,000 population last week. Yet the pullback on reopening theatres, casinos and the like applies nationwide, even in places where there are hardly any infections.

Even the “local lockdowns” aren’t especially local – Wigan (8 cases per 100,000 last week) and Rossendale (6 cases per 100,000) have a lower incidence of the disease than Kent or Hammersmith and Fulham, yet they have been included in a ban on meeting up with their friends and families.

No business can operate confidently in the atmosphere of uncertainty created by the knee jerk and arbitrary government policies. Holiday companies which had made huge efforts to satisfy the demands placed upon them had the rug pulled from them by the decision, with three hours’ notice, to force holidaymakers returning from Spain into quarantine. No tourism business operating to any destination can be sure the same will not happen to them. Think of theatres, which had been preparing for the lucrative panto season, which subsidises much of what else they do. How can they commit themselves to rehearsing casts knowing that they could be closed down again at a moment’s notice?

The businesses ordered to stay closed this weekend may not be the most essential of services – I guess we can get by without having our eyebrows threaded. But they employ large numbers of people, many of whose livelihoods will now be lost.

The Government has let it be known it is prepared to react suddenly and furiously to small changes in Covid-19 infection rates. It seems to have no corresponding concern about the evermore dramatic unemployment statistics.