Social distancing slowing UK virus spread
LONDON: There are signs that social distancing measures are starting to slow the spread of coronavirus in Britain but that does not mean that the new rules should be relaxed, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said on Tuesday.
“There are some signs - as a result of people observing social distancing - that we may be able to flatten the spread of infection but now is absolutely not the time for people to imagine that there can be any relaxation or slackening,” Gove said at a news conference.
Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England, added that the next week or two would be critical in the fight against the virus.
It’s one of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s most famous quotes, which opposition parties have long used to attack the ideology of her Conservative party.
But her latest successor Boris Johnson has countered the Tory icon’s claim that “there’s no such thing as society”, in headline grabbing praise for the response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Some 750,000 members of the public responded to a rallying call for helpers to support the state-run National Health Service, the elderly and vulnerable in self-isolation.
A further 20,000 retired doctors, nurses and other former healthcare professionals are also returning to the medical frontline, as the virus takes hold.
Airline cabin crew have been asked to assist medics, community groups have sprung up to help neighbours, and businesses have been drafted in for a collective mobilisation not seen since World War II.
“One thing I think the coronavirus crisis has already proved is that there really is such a thing as society,” said Johnson, who tested positive for coronavirus last week, saying he had “mild symptoms”.
The virus would be beaten by a joint effort, he said in a video message on Twitter on Sunday, adding: “We are going to do it together.” Thatcher’s remark came at the peak of her 11 years in power that transformed Britain after crippling industrial unrest in the 1970s proved the downfall of her Labour predecessors.
“There’s no such thing as society,” she said in a magazine interview in 1987. “There are individual men and women and there are families.” The comment was interpreted by supporters as a defence of free-market individualism and as a criticism of an over-reliance on the state.