England is entering its strictest national lockdown since March, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday evening after the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 hit new records. He did so on the advice of medical advisers from the National Health Service (NHS) amid fears that hospital capacity could be overwhelmed by new coronavirus cases in the next 21 days. The third lockdown since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in England is set to last until February 15.
This is the third national lockdown in England, which will require residents to stay at home until February 15, with advice to go out once a day for recreation. Justified leaving the home will be only to go to work, if a person cannot work from home, and to get food and medicine.
New measures to combat the epidemic are expected to come into effect from Wednesday, while the closure of non-essential shops is expected to take effect from Monday evening. Under the new rules, schools and colleges will be closed to all students except for children of workers who have to go to work.
Students will not return to campus until at least mid-February. All non-essential shops, as well as service businesses such as hair salons, will be closed, while restaurants can only prepare takeout food.
“It is clear that we need to do more to contain and bring under control the new strain of coronavirus. That would mean your Government asking you once again to stay at home,” Johnson said in an address to the nation.
Johnson sets guidelines for England, while decisions for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are made by the governments there. Wales and Northern Ireland have been in lockdown for some time.
Johnson urged people to start applying them immediately.
He also stressed that those in the four priority groups will receive their first dose of the vaccine by mid-February. British authorities hope to vaccinate all people over the age of 70 and their carers, the 13 million people considered to be in the most at-risk category, by mid-February.
This will be possible thanks to the acceleration of the vaccination campaign that began on December 8 and is now being carried out with two vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca/Oxford.
Speaking from Downing Street, he announced that the coming weeks would be “the most difficult yet”, but expressed confidence that the country was entering the “final phase of the fight”.
On Monday, January 4th in England there were 26,626 COVID patients in hospitals , a jump of 30 percent compared to last week. During the spring of 2020, the largest number of patients in hospitals was on March 12, when there were 18,374 of them in hospitals.
With more than 75,000 deaths, the United Kingdom is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus in Europe, and the trend has worsened in recent weeks.
The daily number of new infections exceeds 50,000 and even reached close to 59,000 on Monday.
Lockdown for Scotland too
Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Monday that a quarantine similar to that of March 2020 will come into effect at midnight and will last until the end of the month in order to control the number of infections with the new version of the coronavirus.
“From midnight until the end of January you must stay at home,” Sturgeon said at a press conference, mentioning the “heavy blow” of the rapidly spreading variant of the virus, according to the Agence France-Presse.
The whole of Scotland has been closed again since Monday and will most likely remain so until spring, The Times newspaper reported earlier.
