London saw wild scenes of a mass weekend exodus ahead of the start of a Christmas lockdown and travel ban fueled by a new, more contagious mutation of COVID-19.
Within hours of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on Saturday of a new top-level lockdown for the capital and surrounding areas – which many opponents said had effectively ‘canceled Christmas’ – thousands took to the road, closing train stations close.
Witnesses told The Sun that it was leaving London as a “war zone,” while journalist Harriet Clugston compared her viral video of people crammed into London’s St. Pancras station with those fleeing Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
“Last train from Saigon,” wrote Clugston next to her video Seen over 3.1 million times Sunday morning, calling it ‘maximum damage guaranteed’.
“As expected, the train is packed … Of course everyone has suitcases,” she said from the train, announcing that social distance “will not be possible” due to the number of people on board.
She admitted that – like everyone else on the train – she had “probably made a very foolish and irresponsible decision to travel.”
But the last-minute announcement of the lockdown triggered “a very predictable rush of people rushing to get out before midnight,” she wrote.
“It is this that has created crowds, which increases the risk of virus transmission on the train.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday tore apart the “clearly totally irresponsible behavior” of the masses rushing to travel before the lockdown’s midnight start.
“People should unpack their bags if they pack them,” he told Sky News.
Hancock insisted that the government was forced to act “quickly and decisively” because the new mutation of the coronavirus “got out of hand.”
The strain – responsible for more than 60% of new infections recorded in London – appears to be more transmissible than previous variants, making it “more important than ever” to fight it, Hancock said.
“This is a deadly disease, we have to control it and it is made more difficult by this new variant,” he told Sky.