England - Johnson set to delay lockdown easing by one month due to increasing COVID-19 cases

[Mary Wilson]

8 HOURS AGO
Sarah Neville, Sebastian Payne, Chris Giles, Oliver Barnesand John Burn-Murdoch in London

Boris Johnson is set to delay the lifting of remaining coronavirus restrictions in England for a month after his chief medical adviser pressed him to postpone the move following a surge in Covid-19 cases.

The restrictions are meant to be removed on June 21, but Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, has sought a four-week delay. The prime minister is due to make an announcement on Monday. The expected delay to lifting restrictions comes as the NHS races to vaccinate more adults amid a sharp rise in Covid-19 infections and hospitalisations across the UK due to the coronavirus variant named Delta.

... Nine in every 10 new Covid-19 cases are the Delta variant, according to a Public Health England report released on Friday.

PHE data also indicated Delta, first identified in India, is 64 per cent more transmissible than the previously dominant Alpha variant that originated in Kent.

https://www.ft.com/content/fa7c25be-d3df-4edd-b86f-b86780b28f95

 

[sharon sanders]

11 June 2021
The R range for England is 1.2 to 1.4 and the growth rate range for England is +3% to +6% per day as of 11 June 2021.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-value-and-growth-rate

 

[kiwibird]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/face-masks-against-experts-amid-24483593

Boris Johnson has told the public they are set to no longer be legally required to wear masks from July 19, despite a surge in new cases and his own chief medical officer saying he’ll continue to wear one.

So is the PM making a huge mistake, one which could lead to a deadly new wave and see us throwing away all our hard work?
...
Transport workers are desperately worried. Early on in the pandemic we lost over 60 drivers to Covid, it was absolutely dreadful.

Today I had a meeting with members of my passenger national committee and one of the bus drivers said straight out: ‘please help us’.