British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said England is adopting a national lockdown that he hopes will be strong enough to contain a new, highly contagious variant of Covid-19.
People can only leave their homes to shop for basic supplies, work when they can’t get home, exercise, go to the doctor and escape domestic violence, he said in an announcement Monday night. Elementary, high schools and colleges will also transition to distance learning on Tuesday, except in rare cases, he said.
“I fully understand the inconvenience and misery this change will cause millions of people and parents across the country,” Johnson said. “The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children … the problem is that schools can act as a transmission vector, allowing the virus to spread between households.”
The UK’s Chief Medical Officers advised the country to go to “Tier 5” alert level, meaning that if the country doesn’t take this action, the National Health Service’s capacity “could be overwhelmed within 21 days,” Johnson said.
The changes come as the UK grapples with a more transmittable variant of Covid-19. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the country has recorded more than 2.6 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 75,000 related deaths to date.
On Monday, the UK registered 58,784 new cases and has now reported more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus seven days in a row.
“The number of deaths has increased by 20% in the past week and will unfortunately continue to rise … With most of the country already taking extreme measures, it is clear that we need to do more together to get this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out. ”
Johnson warned earlier on Monday that the UK would have “tough, tough weeks ahead” and that “no doubt” tougher measures would be implemented.
Prior to the announcement, more than three-quarters of England was living under “Tier 4” restrictions, the country’s toughest measures.
On Monday afternoon, the leader of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, announced a new house arrest for the inhabitants of the country from midnight. Schools in Scotland will remain closed until the beginning of February.
Kier Starmer, leader of Labor, the UK’s main opposition party, tweeted on Sunday that Johnson must “implement national restrictions within 24 hours.”
Coronavirus vaccines are the only bright spot in a pandemic that continues to rage in the UK and much of the West. On Monday, the UK began rolling out the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine after it began deploying the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in December.
“There is one huge difference from last year. We are now rolling out the largest vaccination program in our history,” Johnson said.
If things go well, Johnson said everyone in the top four priority groups should get the first injection of the two-dose vaccines in mid-February. That includes residents in a care home and their caregivers, anyone over the age of 70, all primary care and social workers, and anyone who is clinically vulnerable, he said.
“If we manage to vaccinate all of those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus. And that, of course, will eventually allow us to overcome many of the restrictions that 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 UK’s independent Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies said on Sunday it endorsed the move, with conditions, but the British Medical Association has criticized the UK’s decision to delay second doses.