London: The UK entered a tough new stay-at-home lockdown on Tuesday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it has been both frustrating and alarming to see the speed with which the new variant of the Coronavirus is spreading and declared that hospitals in the country are under more pressure from the deadly virus than at any time in the pandemic.
While Scotland's new rules, which involve school and business closures become legal from Tuesday, England's rules -- akin to the stringent measures of the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020 -- become law in the early hours of Wednesday. However, Johnson has urged the public to begin following the strict work from home rules right away.
The new rules are expected to stay in place until mid-February with a review planned based on vaccine rollout data and infection rates. Our scientists have confirmed this new variant is between 50 and 70 per cent more transmissible -- that means you are much, much more likely to catch the virus and to pass it on, Johnson said in his televised address to the nation on Monday night.
We must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant. That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home. You may only leave home for limited reasons permitted in law, such as to shop for essentials, to work if you absolutely cannot work from home, to exercise, to seek medical assistance such as getting a COVID test, or to escape domestic abuse, he said.
The devolved regions of Wales and Northern Ireland were already under strict lockdown measures since the middle of last month. According to the latest data, in England alone, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals has increased by nearly a third in the last week, to almost 27,000. That number is 40 per cent higher than the first peak of the pandemic in April. On December 29, more than 80,000 people tested positive for COVID across the UK a new record and the number of deaths is up by 20 per cent over the last week.
Of course, there is one huge difference compared to last year. We are now rolling out the biggest vaccination programme in our history. So far, we in the UK have vaccinated more people than the rest of Europe combined, noted Johnson, as he said that the rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from this week means the pace of vaccination is accelerating alongside the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine already being administered.
The closure of schools, which the UK prime minister said could act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households , means remote learning at least until the end of February and students due to sit for their board level exams would be subject to different methods of assessment for the year.
The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet but I really do believe that we are entering the last phase of the struggle.