New guidance for Covid-19 hotspots
GUIDANCE for eight areas considered hotspots for the Indian variant of coronavirus is to be updated to make clear there are no local lockdowns imposed, the Government has said.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it would instead be issuing advice to those living in Burnley, Bedford, Blackburn with Darwen, Bolton, Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside after ministers were accused of bringing in rules on socialising and travelling “by stealth”.
It insisted lockdown measures were not being put in place.
A Government spokesperson said: “We will be updating the guidance for areas where the new Covid-19 variant is spreading to make it clearer we are not imposing local restrictions.
“Instead, we are providing advice on the additional precautions people can take to protect themselves and others in those areas where the new variant is prevalent.”
This includes urging people to meet outdoors rather than indoors, staying two metres apart from people not in the same household, and minimising travel in and out of the area.
The spokesperson said: “These are not new regulations but they are some of the ways everyone can help bring the variant under control in their local area.”
The move comes after a day of confusion over the measures, which appeared on the Government website on Friday, but without an official announcement.
Local leaders in the eight areas said they were unaware of any change.
In a joint statement released earlier yesterday the directors of public health in the affected areas effectively said the advice could be disregarded, saying it had been confirmed there is no restriction on travel in and out of the areas.
The Government said the recommendations to the hotspot areas were first issued on May 14 – with the Prime Minister urging people to be “extra cautious” – before being “formally” published online last week.
No 10 stressed that the guidance was “not statutory” and the Government wanted to move away from “top-down edicts” as lockdown eases.
But ministers came under fire for what Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham labelled a “fairly major communications error” which had caused “huge amounts of confusion”.
Earlier, Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said many of the areas involved had “borne the brunt of the crisis these last 15 months” and felt “abandoned” by Westminster.
“Local lockdowns by stealth, by the back door, and the Secretary of State (Matt Hancock) doesn’t even have the courtesy to come and tell us,” the Leicester South MP said.
Mr Ashworth urged second doses of vaccines to be rolled out at a faster rate to protect against the highly transmissible Indian mutation.