Hancock praises pubs for closing after punters tested positive for Covid-19
Matt Hancock has praised three pubs for closing after the NHS track and trace system identified coronavirus outbreaks among their visitors, just days after pubs, bars and restaurants were allowed to reopen after months of lockdown.
The health secretary told the Commons that the closure of the Fox and Hounds in Yorkshire, the Lighthouse in Somerset and the Village Home in Hampshire showed that the UK’s trace and trace system was working.
Hancock told MPs the pubs were “doing the right thing by their customers and by their communities”.
“This is NHS test and trace working precisely as intended,” he added. “Three pubs shut so that others can be open.”
A spokesperson for Downing Street said the closure of the pubs showed “just how seriously pubs and the public are taking their responsibilities to keep others safe”.
The new infections came after pubs, restaurants, galleries, cinemas and hairdressers were allowed to reopen on so-called Super Saturday over the weekend for the first time since March.
Scenes of crowded streets in London’s Soho district sparked concerns that ignorance of social distancing rules could spark new clusters of infection.
However, Hancock on Sunday stood by pubgoers, insisting that the “vast majority” had behaved responsibly. He added that he was “pleased to see people out and about and largely social distancing”.
The UK has now recorded more than 286,000 cases of the virus and 44,391 fatalities since the first outbreak in York in January.
A report released by Reuters today suggested the actual death toll could be much higher than government estimates, claiming that coronavirus-related fatalities in the UK had now surpassed 55,000.
It comes as former health secretary Jeremy Hunt today said the government initially considered attempts to control the virus as “a futile exercise”. Hunt said the government had assumed that a level of “herd immunity” would be reach organically, as it thought the virus would be as easy to tackle as an influenza pandemic.
Hunt told a meeting of the Independent Sage group of scientists: “I don’t think we are aiming for herd immunity but because our mindset was around tackling flu pandemics.”
“There was a sense that basically it would be impossible to hold the prevalence rate of this disease below 50 per cent of the population and ultimately 60 per cent catching it was an inevitability.”