And a merry @*&@! Xmas to you, too!
New mutant super- strain of Covid has hit More Brits to enter Tier 4 on Boxing Day Worst day for deaths in eight months
TWAS the night before Christmas. Sort of. But that didn’t stop Matt “Coco” Hancock kicking us in the baubles. The miserable old grinch.
MATT “The Grinch” Hancock unveiled more festive misery for Brits last night.
The Health Secretary revealed another superinfectious strain of coronavirus has hit the UK.
And he announced millions more people will be plunged into a Tier 4 lockdown from Boxing Day to stop it spreading.
It comes as the UK yesterday reported the highest daily death figure – 744 – since April 29.
The new strain is understood to have “mutated further” than the first variant identified in England at the end of September.
Mr Hancock said the South African mutation – of which two cases have been identified so far – is even “more transmissible” and announced that more
areas will be thrown into a Tier 4 lockdown.
It means a total of 24million people, mainly in the south and east, will now be under the strictest restrictions from Boxing Day.
Mr Hancock said: “Just as we had got a tiered system in place that was able to control this virus we have discovered a new, more contagious virus – a variant that is spreading at a dangerous rate. This
Christmas and the start of 2021 is going to be tough.
“The new variant makes everything much harder because it spreads so much faster. But we mustn’t give up now. We know we can control this virus. We know we can get through this together.”
Mr Hancock said cases rose by 57% in England in the last week, with hospital admissions at 1,909 a day.
Sussex, Suffolk, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Waverley in Surrey, Hampshire and parts of Essex not already in Tier 4 are among areas which will go under the highest restrictions from Boxing Day.
Other regions, including Somerset, will move into Tier 3 and Cornwall and Herefordshire will be placed in Tier 2.