“We will spare no effort in developing vaccines, treatments, new forms of mass testing. But unless we make visible progress, we assume that the restrictions I announced will be in place for at least six months,” he said during a statement in the British parliament.
Boris Johnson confirmed that, starting on Thursday, ‘pubs’, bars, restaurants and other leisure spaces in England are required to close at 22:00, service can only be done at the table and employees will have to use mask.
The Government also began to recommend that people work from home if they can and suspended the public’s return to major sporting events, scheduled for October, among other measures.
Boris Johnson emphasized that this is not a new national confinement like the one enacted in March, but it threatened with more restrictions and greater if the effective transmissibility index (Rt) does not fall below 1.
The prime minister also promised greater consultation with parliament and transparency in the publication of information after criticism from members of the Conservative party itself, who expressed reservations about imposing further restrictions due to the impact on the economy.
“We are taking decisive steps to balance saving lives with protecting jobs and livelihoods,” he said.
The Labor Party supported the measures, but reiterated the need for companies and workers to receive support, and defended the extension of the layoff regime, which is expected to end in October.
Boris Johnson said he had an argument on Monday and this morning with officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who have the autonomy to determine their own rules.
Scottish government chief Nicola Sturgeon said he would announce new measures at about 2 pm in the regional parliament and make a public statement on television at 8:05 pm, shortly after Boris Johnson also made a statement to the country.
The Wales Executive announced a local confinement in the regions of Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport and Blaenau Gwent from 18:00 and the Northern Ireland Executive determined that as of today it is forbidden to meet between different households in closed spaces.
Today’s announcement follows an acceleration in the number of infection cases in recent weeks, which the government’s scientific advisers fear will result in an overload of public health services and an increase in direct and indirect mortality.
The Common Biosafety Center, which includes the general directors of health in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, ordered the alert to rise to level 4, which indicates that the new coronavirus is in circulation in the population and is contagious is high or is increasing exponentially.
The British government officially registered 41,788 deaths in the United Kingdom, but according to official statistics, the actual number including suspected cases, whose death certificate refers to covid-19, is more than 57 thousand.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed at least 965,760 deaths and more than 31.3 million cases of infection in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 1,920 people died from 69,200 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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