By Ben Kerrigan-
Downing Street is being put under pressure to intensify Covid rules over Christmas, following criticism that plans to ease rules in the UK is a “rash decision” that will “cost many lives”.
The Health Service Journal and British Medical Journal has criticised the British government’s plans to allow mixing over the festive period. Rather than lifting restrictions over Christmas as currently planned, the authors called on the government to UK follow the more cautious examples of Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. They said that with current restrictions failing to control the virus, extrapolation suggests that the actual figure is likely to be more than 40 times higher
British Ministers are meeting tomorrow to review current restrictions for England. The authors of the journal claim that when British government devised the current plans to allow household mixing over Christmas it had assumed the covid-19 demand on the NHS would be decreasing. They say the fact it is rising, and the emergence of a new strain of the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy, changes the whole picture.
No 10 said the rules were “under constant review” but it still intended to allow families to meet up. The dilemma facing the government comes as millions of people in London and Essex prepare to move into England’s toughest tier of coronavirus rules at 00:01 GMT on Wednesday.
In a joint editorial criticising the UK’s Christmas rules, the editors of HSJ and BMJ wrote: “We believe the government is about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives.”
“If our political leaders fail to take swift and decisive action, they can no longer claim to be ‘protecting the NHS’,” they added.
Emergency Meeting
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to convene an emergency Cobra meeting to review the Christmas rules.
“I understand that people want to spend time with their families after this awful year, but the situation has clearly taken a turn for the worse since the decision about Christmas was taken. It serves no-one for politicians to ignore this fact,” Sir Keir wrote in a letter.
At the end of November, the leaders of the four UK nations agreed to allow some coronavirus rules to be temporarily relaxed over the festive period.
Travel restrictions will be eased to allow up to three households to form a bubble and stay overnight at each other’s homes from 23 to 27 December.
Officials in Northern Ireland are being urged to rethink the Christmas rules amid “unprecedented pressures” on some hospitals, while doctors in Wales said the relaxation of restrictions “makes no sense” as Covid cases continue to rise.