Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Sunday that tougher restrictions could be decided in England to combat the rapid spread of the new coronavirus, attributed in part to a new variant of the virus.
The UK is one of the most bereaved countries in Europe by the virus, with 74,570 dead. Within 24 hours, an additional 57,725 people tested positive for the virus, according to the latest official data released on Saturday.
“We may have to do things in the coming weeks which will be more difficult in several parts of the country,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the BBC. He added that closing schools, a measure taken in late March during the first wave of the pandemic, “is one of those things.”
Even though the conservative leader has declared the education of children a “priority”, he stressed the need to recognize “the impact of the new variant of the virus”.
Each of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom decides on its strategy for combating the virus.
Three quarters of the population has so far been reconfigured and the start of the school year postponed for some students, especially in London and in the south-east of England, particularly affected by the rise in cases.
In areas where schools are open, Boris Johnson encouraged parents to send their children there, stressing that they were “safe” there. “The risk for children and young people is very, very low,” he said.
From Monday, the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the AstraZeneca group will be administered in the United Kingdom. A total of 530,000 doses are available on Monday, and tens of millions of doses should be by the end of March, the United Kingdom having ordered a total of 100 million doses.
More than a million people in the UK have already received a dose of the vaccine from the US-German alliance Pfizer / BioNtech, deployed since December 8.
For both vaccines, two doses should be injected.
The government has decided to postpone the second dose from 3 to 12 weeks, so that as many people as possible receive a first dose, a decision that raised eyebrows.
“Every time we vaccinate someone a second time, we are not vaccinating another person for the first time. This means that we are missing the opportunity to considerably reduce the risk that the most vulnerable people will become seriously ill because of the Covid-19 “, justified Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, Sunday in the columns from the Mail on Sunday.
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