By Ben Kerrigan-
England is facing a New Year lockdown after the British government’s chief scientific adviser warned that an extension of Tier 4 restrictions may be needed.
England is expected to join London and parts of southeast England in Tier 4 on Wednesday 30 December, when the next review of the tier system is due. The expected state of affairs was also indicated last week when Prime minister Boris Johnson seemed to indicated a new year lockdown when questioned about the prospect by journalists
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The clampdown follows concern that the new strain could spread out of control unless a national lockdown is imposed. It promises to ruin new year from millions of brits who had hoped the high tiers and restrictions imposed for the Christmas period would have been enough,
The apparent rapid spread of the virus has already led to chaos at Channel ports caused by the French travel ban expected to last at least until Christmas Eve. There was already strong suspicion that a new year lockdown was being planned in response to the originally announced plans for families in the UK to be allowed to mix with a maximum of two households.
The Stormont executive in Belfast has advised against non-essential travel between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic.
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Individuals arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK have been asked to self-isolate for 10 days.
Stormont is also to advise against travel between Northern Ireland and rest of UK – but no outright ban
The looming Tier 4 extension in England follows a warning from England’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance on Monday during a Downing Street news conference alongside the prime minister. Sir Patrick said cases had spread “everywhere” and warned the country to brace itself for further restrictions.
“The evidence on this virus is that it spreads easily,” he said. “It’s more transmissible, we absolutely need to make sure we have the right level of restrictions in place.
“I think it is likely that this will grow in numbers of the variant across the country and I think it’s likely, therefore, that measures will need to be increased in some places, in due course, not reduced.”
And on Tier 4 measures, he urged the public to take the new COVID variant “incredibly seriously” and said it required “more action in order to keep it down and that’s why Tier 4 is important”.
In another highly significant development at the Downing Street news conference, Mr Johnson signalled that another government U-turn may be on the way on schools reopening in January.
After repeatedly saying during the pandemic that keeping schools open was a “national priority”, the prime minister said the return of pupils to classrooms in the New Year would be kept under review.
“The most useful thing I can tell you at this stage is obviously we want, if we possibly can, to get schools back in a staggered way at the beginning of January in the way that we have set out,” he said.
“But obviously… the commonsensical thing to do is to follow the path of the epidemic and as we showed last Saturday to keep things under constant review.
“But it is very, very important to get kids and keep kids in education if you possibly can.”
Meanwhile, government scientific advisers have claimed that unless the government imposed another national lockdown within days thousands of lives could be lost in a “human disaster”.
Speaking during a briefing by leading scientists, Robert West, a member of the government’s SAGE advisory committee, said the current tier system was unlikely to contain the spread of the virus.
“We need to reset our strategy and move rapidly to a zero COVID strategy of the kind that many have been proposing,” he said.
“This will involve stricter but more rational social distancing rules across the country and finally be doing what we should have done from the start – to build the kind of test, travel, isolate and support programmes they have in countries in the Far East.
“It sounds expensive, but the alternative could well be a catastrophic collapse in confidence in the country’s ability to control the virus and the economic, human and social disaster that would follow.”
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