England has been notified of the New Year’s lockdown after the government’s chief scientific adviser warned that a massive extension of Level 4 restrictions was needed.
With the new variant now emerging across the UK, large areas of England are expected to join London and parts of southeast England at Tier 4 on Wednesday, 30 December, when the next revision of the class system comes.
This campaign is expected to take effect in the new year.
Means the rapid spread of the virus Covid-19 The crisis facing Boris Johnson is escalating dramatically, due to the chaos at the canal ports French travel ban It is expected to last until at least Christmas Eve.
And in another blow to the mobile crowd, CEO of Stormont Belfast It is advised against non-essential travel between Northern Ireland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The executive is also urging anyone arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK to self-isolate for 10 days.
The England Level 4 stretch follows a looming Warning from Chief Scientific Adviser for England Sir Patrick Vallance On Monday during a press conference on Downing Street alongside the Prime Minister.
Although he said the decision on Level 4 zones was for politicians, Sir Patrick said cases had spread “everywhere” and warned the country to prepare for more restrictions.
“The evidence for this virus is that it spreads easily,” he said. “It’s much more portable, and we urgently need to make sure we have the right level of restrictions in place.
“I think this is likely to increase in the numbers of variables across the country, and I think it is likely, therefore, that the measures will need to be increased in some places, in due course, not reduced.”
Regarding Level 4 actions, he urged the public to take the new COVID variant “incredibly seriously” and said it requires “more actions in order to keep it low and that is why Level 4 is so important”.
In another very important development at the Downing Street press conference, Johnson indicated that another government turnaround may be on the way to reopening schools in January.
After repeatedly saying during the pandemic that keeping schools open is a “national priority,” the prime minister said that returning pupils to classrooms in the new year would remain under review.
“The most useful thing that I can tell you at this stage is that it is clear that we want, if possible, to return schools in an intermittent manner in early January the way we started,” he said.
“But it is clear … the logical thing to do is to follow the course of the pandemic and as we showed last Saturday to keep things under constant review.
“But it is very important to have children and continue their education if possible.”
Earlier, government scientific advisers claimed that unless the government imposes another national lockdown within days, thousands of lives could perish in a “human catastrophe”.
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Speaking during a briefing by the top scientists, Robert West, a member of the SAGE government advisory committee, said the current level system is unlikely to contain the spread of the virus.
“We need to reset our strategy and quickly move to a zero-COVID strategy of the kind that many are suggesting,” he said.
“This will include stricter but more rational social distancing rules across the country, and finally doing what we should have done from the start – to build the kind of testing, travel, isolation and support programs they have in countries in the Far East.
“It sounds costly, but the alternative could be a catastrophic collapse in confidence in the country’s ability to control the virus and the economic, human and social catastrophe that will follow.”
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