United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said that the country will go in full lockdown amidst the rise in COVID-19 cases. This with other regulation methods would once again put nearly 56 million people in England into quarantine at least until mid-February.
The British prime minister addressed his compatriots via television and said the people need to work together in order to curb the new variant of COVID until the vaccine is rolled out.
‘With most of the country already under extreme measures, it's clear that we need to do more, together, to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out," PM Boris Johnson said.
"In England, we must therefore go into a national lockdown,” he added.
The new measures are similar to the ones imposed back in March 2020 when the initial COVID wave was being expected. The lockdowns include the closure of schools, working from home, strict limits on leaving homes except for exercise, essential shopping and for medical supplies, and lastly, no household mixing.
"With every jab that goes into our arms, we are tilting the odds against Covid and in favour of the British people," Johnson said, while further adding that with he was encouraged by the roll-out of two Covid vaccines, including one developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which could see the four most vulnerable groups inoculated in the next six weeks.
The UK has moved to the fifth level of coronavirus wave, which is supposedly the highest stage of it the four chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said. This will mean that the state-run National Health Service (NHS) is at risk of being overwhelmed within 21 days if no appropriate action is taken.
Britain has grappled with one of the worst mortality rate in the world due to which majority of its population, as many as 44 million people were already put under extreme lockdown regulations.
However, the UK government has continuously failed to contain the spread or the death of the people because of the virus.
Johnson said that as of Monday, almost 27,000 people with Covid were in the hospital -- 40 per cent more than at the peak of the first wave of the outbreak on April last year.
