‘No virus spike’ as lockdown is eased
Chief statistician warns of need to stay vigilant
EXPERTS HAVE said the easing of restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus have not led to any significant rise in the number of cases detected, as Boris Johnson played down the prospect of a second national lockdown.
The Prime Minister said he did not want to use a national lockdown any more than Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent, and that authorities were getting better at identifying and isolating local outbreaks.
“I can’t abandon that tool any more than I would abandon a nuclear deterrent. But it is like a nuclear deterrent, I certainly don’t want to use it. And nor do I think we will be in that position again,” he told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday.
His comments could lead to further tensions between Ministers and their scientific experts after the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned on Friday there was “a risk” that national measures could be needed as winter approaches.
But the UK’s National Statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond yesterday said he had not noticed any uptick in coronavirus since the lockdown measures were eased.
He said: “The message has been quite consistent in that we must be alert and we must be socially distanced, and if we are really super careful and if we are able to follow all the rules, it does seem to me that we should expect there to be a relative flatline at the moment. Clearly over the autumn we will need to be ever vigilant.”
One of the rules referred to by Sir Ian is the wearing of facemasks, which will become mandatory in shops on July 24. Yesterday,
a protest against the wearing of masks was held in Hyde Park in London.
As he approached his first anniversary in office, Mr Johnson insisted his agenda for domestic reform and “levelling up” the economy would not be blown off course by the pandemic.
“We want to be a transformative Government, because there’s a massive opportunity in this country to do things differently and to do things better,” he said.
Alien“We’ve seen that really exemplified in what happened with coronavirus.”
The PM confirmed that as part of that he was looking at reform of the Civil Service in the wake of the departure of the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill.
“Please don’t think that I in any way underestimate the brilliance of the UK Civil Service, they are absolutely fantastic,” he said. “But maybe there are ways in which we can all learn together to do things faster, to have a real spirit of ‘can do’.”