Whether it takes place on July 5th (unlikely!), July 19th or later, “Freedom Day” is supposed to be irreversible. So why is a senior health official saying we may need to lock down again this winter and why is a Cabinet Minister unable to deny it?
Dr Susan Hopkins, the Director for Covid at Public Health England, says “we may have to do further lockdowns this winter” – a claim which Justice Secretary Robert Buckland has refused to deny. So will this ever end?
The Independent has more.
Dr Hopkins… said Britain needed to move to a situation where we can “live with this” in the longer term.
She told the Andrew Marr Show: “I think that means that we wouldn’t normally put people into lockdown for severe cases of influenza.
“We may have to do further lockdowns this winter, I can’t predict the future – it really depends on whether the hospitals start to become overwhelmed at some point.
“But I think we will have alternative ways to manage this through vaccination, through antivirals, through drugs, through testing, that we didn’t have last winter, and all of those things allow us different approaches, rather than restrictions on lives and restrictions on livelihoods, that will move us forward into the next phase of learning to live with this as an endemic, as something that happens as part of the respiratory viruses.”
Asked about her comments, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland declined to rule out more restrictions, telling Times Radio: “The essence of the virus is you can’t ever say mission accomplished.”
Worth reading in full.
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