“They will be tough, very tough months.” Boris Johnson has appealed to the country to unite once again behind extreme measures to contain the virus: a national lockdown, the third from May to today, which will last at least until mid-February. With a televised speech to the nation, the British Prime Minister stressed that the so-called “English variant” of Covid it is about 60% more contagious than the previous ones. If the restrictions were working, the new strain forced the government to rethink yet another. Therefore, shops and restaurants, gyms and sports facilities, cultural centers, libraries, theaters and, above all, schools and universities closed: distance learning for everyone starting from January 5, even for elementary school children that only on January 4 they were back on the benches.
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Like last spring, going out is only allowed to play sports once a day, to get basic necessities, to receive health care (including tampons for Covid) and to escape domestic violence. Parliament was recalled to approve the new measures. The situation in the UK is certainly serious. On January 4, 58,000 new cases of Covid were recorded in 24 hours and more than 400 deaths. About 26,000 patients with the virus are hospitalized in the country’s hospitals. Last spring, when the national system was already on its last legs, there were only 18,000 hospitalizations. Several UK hospitals have already announced that they are close to the crisis.
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Labor leader Keir Starmer had already asked several days ago for the introduction of a new national lockdown, defining the “out of control” virus. On Sunday, Johnson at the BBC had hinted that if stricter containment measures were possible, the schools would remain open. “They are safe environments,” he said. Thirty-five hours later and, in addition, in the wake of similar announcements in Scotland and Wales, the turnaround.
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The difference, Johnson pointed out, is that today there are two vaccines. The first doses of the AstraZeneca formula were administered just yesterday. “With the wind in our sails,” the premier stressed, it is possible that by mid-February we can begin to glimpse a return to normality. Johnson hopes to be able to vaccinate the four most vulnerable groups by then, for a total of about 14 million people (which means two million doses per week).
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January 4, 2021 (change January 4, 2021 | 23:07)
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