Boris Johnson has been warned that a further relaxation of restrictions over Christmas could trigger another wave of coronavirus infections.
The coronavirus tier system is due to be reviewed on Wednesday, two weeks after it was first imposed following England’s national lockdown in November.
It comes ahead of a UK-wide relaxation of social distancing rules for Christmas, allowing up to three households to get together in homes and places of worship between 23-27 December.
NHS Providers, which represents health trusts in England, has told the prime minister in a letter to exercise “extreme caution” when making the decision to move any areas into a lower COVID-19 tier. NHS bosses say areas which need to be moved into Tier 3 should be done so “as soon as this is needed, without any delay”.
NHS Providers CEO Chris Hopson said health workers are “really worried”, adding that due to a surge in COVID-19 patients and a rise in infection rates, hospitals are facing a difficult period.
“Any extra social contact equals virus spread,” he said. “We all want to get together, but we need to ensure we look at the evidence. Although we’ve made some good progress… the reality is the progress we’ve made as a whole is at the lowest end of expectations. We’ve got to keep going with these tough restrictions over winter… we cannot take risks”.
Ominously, even without relaxation of rules, the daily number of recorded cases, having been reduced from 31,000 a day at the beginning of November to 14,000 at the end of November, has risen to over 21,000 as of yesterday … :shock:
Yes Omah, they’ve been saying on our local news how the infection rates are creeping up again.
Boris is on a loser whatever he does.
Can you imagine the outcry if he kept a tight lockdown all over Christmas? He would be lynched!
Then he is in the poo because he tries to relent a little. Then if/when a third surge happens, he will be blamed for that too.
I don’t believe for a moment, that ANY politician could have prevented, or stopped, Covid. So perhaps some people ought to give him a break unless they could do any better themselves.
I would love to ask him if he would still have taken the job if he had known what was ahead with Brexit and Covid!
BJ’s “optimism” has been severly dented by his continued lack of success (AKA failure) in both combating COVID-19 (moonshot) and securing Brexit (oven-ready) …
His decision to rely on SPADS and cronies to “govern” the country has massively backfired on him personally - the results of their meddling has been chaos and confusion in every sector - his intervention in the control of COVID-19 has resulted in the UK having the highest associated death-rate in Europe and, along with France, the highest number of cases behind the much larger countries of USA, India, Brazil and Russia.
For those who think that being infected with COVID-19 and surviving will give the survivor immunity, think again … :!:
A local plumber came to fix a sink leak at my house today - a young, strapping lad of 21 and over 6 feet tall - he told me that he’d been struck down twice and tested positive for COVID-19 … :shock:
Early in the year, his symptoms were mainly related to breathing and the difficulty in just getting a breath plus overwhelming fatigue. The second bout, too, brought overwhelming fatigue but, this time, not breathing problems but changes to taste and smell, resulting in a complete loss of appetite and massive weight loss. Luckily, being young, he’s recovered from the primary symptoms of both bouts but he’s still occasionally “out-of-sorts” and “not himself”. Apparently, the two infections were of slightly different strains so he’s hoping there isn’t a third strain lurking in a client’s house …
Just been reading about a new strain of this virus that’s showing up in the London Area, really worrying and just what we don’t want.
As I’m on the tablet I can’t post a link but it’s on the BBC News Site.
There could be a spike in coronavirus cases after Christmas, even with the early lockdown, the health minister has said. Vaughan Gething told BBC Radio Wales the stay-at-home rule was introduced from midnight “partly” as a result of a new strain of the virus. The variant had been “seeded” in all parts of Wales, including the north.
All of Wales is in the highest level of lockdown - level four - with all but essential shops closed, and people being told to “stay home” to save lives.
Pressure on the NHS has exceeded the Welsh Government’s worst case scenario and without action there will be an “even bigger spike in cases”, Mr Gething said. “It would [the NHS] be in danger of not being able to cope if we don’t act - and there’s still a risk even now,” he said.
Tighter restrictions likely, Sir Patrick Vallance warns
Further restrictions are likely to be introduced in England to control the new variant of Covid-19, the UK’s chief scientific adviser has said.
Sir Patrick Vallance said measures could “need to be increased in some places, in due course, not reduced”.
Sir Patrick also predicted there would be spike in cases after an “inevitable period of mixing” over Christmas.
Speaking at a Downing Street briefing, Sir Patrick said he believed the variant would help cases “spread more”.
Sir Patrick Vallance said the variant of the virus had to be taken “incredibly seriously”.
He said: "It’s really important to follow the rules carefully and make an assumption that you could be infectious.
“You could be the person spreading it to somebody else, and [you should] behave accordingly.”
He added: “The doubling time of this infection with a new variant is quite fast, it is more transmissible, it does require more action in order to keep it down and that’s why tier 4 is important.”
UK totals for each day will reflect the sum of the nations which reported data. Cases and deaths that would have been reported during these periods are likely to instead be reported on the following days. As a result, any changes to published data should be interpreted with caution during this period, as they may be a result of changes to reporting schedules.
23 December 2020
During the holiday period, the COVID-19 Dashboard will be updated every day, but the amount of data being updated will vary.
[/CENTER]
UK cases and deaths will be updated every day throughout the holiday period, with the following service changes:
[LIST]
[]England: data updated daily
[]Northern Ireland: no data on 24–28 December
[]Scotland: no deaths data on 25–28 December and 1–4 January
[]Wales: no data on 25 December and 1 January
[/LIST]
UK totals for each day will reflect the sum of the nations which reported data. Cases and deaths that would have been reported during these periods are likely to instead be reported on the following days. As a result, any changes to published data should be interpreted with caution during this period, as they may be a result of changes to reporting schedules.
Testing and capacity metrics will be updated on working days. This means they will not be updated 25–28 December 2020, and data for this period will instead be updated on 29 December 2020.
Healthcare statistics will be published when data are provided by NHS England and NHS Improvement and health authorities in the Devolved Administrations, but may experience interruptions during this period.
