British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said England will adopt a national exclusion which he hopes will be difficult enough to contain a new, highly contagious variant of Covid-19.
People can only leave their homes to buy necessities, work if they cannot leave home, exercise, go to the doctor and escape domestic abuse, he said in an announcement on Monday night. Primary schools, secondary schools and colleges will also move to distance education on Tuesday, except in rare cases, he said.
“I understand the inconvenience and distress that this change will cause millions of people and parents up and down the country,” Johnson said. “The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children … the problem is that schools can act as vectors of transmission and cause the virus to spread between households.”
The British chief medical officers recommend that the country go to alert level “Tier 5”, which means that if the country does not take this action, the capacity of the national health service could be overwhelmed within 21 days, “Johnson said.
The changes come as the UK struggles with a more transferable variant of Covid-19. To date, the country has recorded more than 2.6 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 75,000 related deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
On Monday, the United Kingdom recorded 58,784 new cases, and they have now reported more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus for seven days in a row.
“The number of deaths has risen by 20% in the past week and will unfortunately continue to rise … With most of the country already under extreme measures, it is clear that we need to do more to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are taking place. are being rolled out. ‘
Johnson warned earlier Monday that the UK was “facing difficult, difficult weeks” and that “there is no doubt” that stricter measures would be put in place.
Prior to the announcement, more than three-quarters of England were living under ‘Tier 4’ restrictions, the country’s most difficult level of measures.
On Monday afternoon, the leader of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, announced a new home order for the country’s citizens from midnight. Schools in Scotland will remain closed until early February.
Kier Starmer, leader of the largest opposition Labor Party in the UK, tweeted on Sunday that Johnson ‘should impose national restrictions within the next 24 hours’.
Vaccinations against Coronavirus are the only bright spot in a pandemic that is still raging in the UK and most of the West. On Monday, the UK began launching the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after using the Pfizer / BioNTech shot in December.
“There’s one big difference compared to last year. We’re now launching the largest vaccination program in our history,” Johnson said.
If all goes well, Johnson said everyone in the top four priority groups should get the first shot of the two-dose vaccines by mid-February. This includes residents of a care home and their carers, all over the age of 70, all health and social workers in the foreground, as well as anyone who is clinically vulnerable.
“If we succeed in vaccinating all the groups, we will remove a large number of people from the virus. And, of course, it will enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long,” he said.
The UK government has decided to introduce a 12-week delay between the first and second doses of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines, in an effort to cover as much of the population as possible .
The British Independent Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies said on Sunday it endorsed the move, with conditions, but the British Medical Association criticized the UK’s decision to delay second doses.