In the face of a new, more contagious variant of the corona virus, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been implementing locking operations in London and the southeastern UK, including banning holiday gatherings outside immediate homes.
His critics point to this latest response months after the epidemic from Johnson’s management – and a week after he promised to allow Christmas celebrations with three separate houses. Govt-19 has led to nearly 2 million Britons affected and more than 67,000 killed.
Johnson announced the measures on Saturday following an emergency cabinet meeting in which top government officials discussed the new strain of the corona virus, which the prime minister said could spread 70 percent more than previous versions. Some Experts have warned Further research is needed to prove whether the mutation is actually contagious.
“When the virus changes its attack mode, we need to change our security system,” Johnson said. “We have to act on the information as we have, because it’s spreading so fast right now.”
The announcement follows a week Covid-19 case rates in London almost doubled, And government officials said more than this 60 percent of cases The reason for the new strain on the city called VUI-202012/01.
Chris Witty, the country’s chief medical officer, said the strain was not believed to be more dangerous than previous types.
“There is currently no evidence that the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or affects vaccinations and treatment, although urgent work is underway to confirm this,” Witty said.
The latest lockdown is the country’s toughest since March, with effect from Sunday. It will be reviewed again on December 30, in an effort to prevent the spread of the new strain beyond the UK’s southeastern region and its center of London, Johnson said on Saturday.
New regulations restrict essential travel in the region, defined as travel for work, education or health care. Essential shops and businesses, including gyms, salons and movie theaters, are ordered to close. The area is placed in the newly created layer 4 UK stratification system risk, Areas layered as Tier 1 are considered to be the most controlled areas of Govt-19.
For weeks, Johnson struggled to balance the strong public health response to fast-growing case numbers with pressure that the economy should not be further damaged. As the Christmas holidays approached, he promised to ease restrictions to allow five days of modest rejoicing.
“Have a happy little Christmas for yourself, but this year, alas, preferably a very low Christmas,” he said last week.
The British Medical Journal And Health Service Magazine A joint editorial was published this week, Criticizing the government’s response to date, allowing even small holiday meetings could lead to new epidemics that would overwhelm the National Health Service.
“The government was too slow to introduce restrictions in the spring and again in the fall. It must now reverse its poor decision to allow home mixing,” the editorial read.
However, Johnson seems to have taken that advice to a point: areas outside the Tier 4 zone will be allowed to hold meetings at Christmas – although one day more than Johnson recently promised.
Overall, the lockout is part of an effort to slow down the spread and flatten the curve in order to prevent inconvenience to hospitals, he said.
“Evidence without action is that infections will rise, hospitals will increase and thousands more will lose their lives,” Johnson said Saturday.
Johnson has been criticized for acting too slow throughout the infection
Other countries, including Italy, Austria and Germany, have tightened restrictions in response to the holiday season. In France, bars and restaurants have been ordered to close and a curfew has been imposed; On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron announced that he had tested positive for the virus.
However, the United States, one of the world’s worst corona virus outbreaks, has not tightened controls nationally. Johnson’s decision received a pushback from his U.S. opponent, President Donald Trump, on Saturday afternoon, and Trump wrote on Twitter, “The treatment could not be worse than the problem!”
Trump is a staunch opponent of locking up in the United States, delivering results on efforts to curb the spread to state-level leaders. The U.S. response is overwhelming, and about 300,000 Americans have died of the corona virus this year. Both the UK and the US are among the top 10 countries with the highest per capita mortality rate since Govt-19.
Labor leader Sir Khair Stormer, Johnson’s opponent in parliament, also criticized the lockout, but said Johnson’s rapid policy changes were confusing.
“I think the British public deserves more decisive leadership than that,” he said.
As Jokes Silperner reports to Vox, Covid-19 cases have been steadily rising across the UK since September. Johnson’s critics, including Stormer, have accused the prime minister of continuing to misbehave, leading to the country’s current crisis.
Among these misguided guidelines, Silberner describes the poor handling of PPE distribution and the implementation of testing and contract tracking programs at the onset of epidemics. NHS staff faced a severe shortage of masks and other equipment in the spring, and hundreds of health workers died. Trial efforts dwindled in the spring, while a contact-tracking application faced challenges in the summer, with a second attempt back in September.
Silberner described the effort to prioritize eating in the summer by subsidizing food in August, a move that has often been condemned by public health officials.
“In a word, it’s nuts,” said Lawrence Costin, director of the WHO Cooperation Center for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “In the midst of an epidemic, this is actually the exact opposite of what public health evidence suggests.”
In the midst of these misguidances, Silberner describes a government capable of learning from its own mistakes. It seems to be playing out now that Johnson has approved inter-house visits over the Christmas holidays.
People will want some resemblance to the traditions they have become accustomed to. But Johnson’s efforts to preserve heritage have failed because of the choices made weeks ago – and now the UK is facing serious action as the government struggles to deal with the significant sharpness in the caskets.
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