Exclusive: Mayor Sadiq Khan says no “accurate picture” of Covid-19 resurgence in London
Sadiq Khan today says Covid-19 is “now spreading widely and quickly across London again” but warns that there is no totally “accurate picture” due to government failings.
Writing exclusively for City A.M., the Mayor of London says this is “the most precarious period for business we have ever faced” but rejects what he calls the “false dichotomy” of saving lives or saving the economy.
Shaun Bailey, Khan’s Conservative challenger, last week told City A.M. that the Mayor should get “London moving again.”
Read more: Tory candidate Bailey says Mayor must get people back to work
But today the City Hall supremo says such a choice between the economy and health “suits only those who refuse to accept the true reality of the situation and the limited choices the Government has left us with.”
The Mayor says there is no “accurate picture of the levels of the virus in different parts of our city” but that indicators such as 111 calls, GP visits, hospital admissions and intensive care numbers are “are accelerating in the wrong direction.”
The capital’s economy has been hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and the continued guidance to work from home.
In another attack on central government, Khan says: “The only way London’s businesses will be able to survive this crisis is if the Government takes the right measures to stop the spread of the virus now, and provides the full financial support needed to prop up the economy and protect jobs.”
Khan also reasserts his call for a review of the 10pm hospitality curfew “having seen evidence from around the country that the measure may be counterproductive.”
Hospitality businesses have been hit hard by the early closing times, especially those that had begun to see a recovery in August and September as the capital’s residents began to venture out in greater numbers.