FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON – From midnight today nearly ten million people in Great Britain (out of a total population of 66 million) they will be back in lockdown: the local measures, which mainly affect the regions of Northeast England and the metropolitan areas of Manchester and Birmingham, are the answer to a surge in infections that saw yesterday record over 4 thousand new cases nationwide. The new measures require the closure of pubs and restaurants at ten in the evening and the prohibition of socializing with people outside the family, in addition to the recommendation to use public transport only when strictly necessary. And the fear now that these measures could be extended to the rest of the country, starting with London, where coronavirus cases have doubled in the past two weeks.
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Already last Monday the rule of six had sprung up across the country, which prohibits meeting, even at home and with relatives, in groups of more than six people. And today Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched a public appeal from the newspapers to respect this provision to flatten the camel’s hump and thus save Christmas: because if these measures remain in place until December, then goodbye dinner.
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But the London government actually appears to be in full panic: and filters the news that if within two weeks the infections do not return, a new lockdown would be triggered on a national basis, including the recommendation to always work from home. This last backtrack would be particularly painful – and disastrous for the economy – given that the government has tried to persuade the riotous citizens to return to their offices, who are now in the vast majority more than comfortable in smart working.
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Downing Street’s concern that the situation will get out of hand and Britain will fall victim to a second wave, a bit like what happened in Spain: in reality the level of infections – and even more so that of hospitalizations and deaths – far from the peaks of March-April. But Johnson, after so many uncertainties and messes in managing the pandemic, this time does not want to take risks. All the more so as the trend emerging across Europe is anything but reassuring. Even in Germany, a model country in the management of the infection, the virus is raising its head: yesterday the new cases exceeded two thousand, a threshold that has not been seen for some time. And in France, the health minister admitted that ICU admissions are growing at a worrying level.
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a very serious situation is that which is occurring in Europe, where new weekly cases of coronavirus have exceeded those reported when the pandemic first hit in March, said Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe. Over half of the European countries – underlined during an online briefing – have registered increases of more than 10% in the last two weeks and in seven countries the increase was more than double. These numbers, he concluded, represent an alarming trend and must be a wake-up call for all. WHO is also concerned about the reduction of quarantine periods in the various countries.
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17 September 2020 (change September 17, 2020 | 19:39)
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