National lockdown looms as teachers go head-to-head with government
Ministers have refused to rule out a third national lockdown in England, as coronavirus cases and hospitalisations surge beyond numbers seen in the peak of the first wave.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said this morning that the new strain of coronavirus was spreading rapidly across the country. “We can’t rule anything out,” he told Sky News. “We are absolutely prepared to act as necessary.”
It comes after a further 54,990 people tested positive for coronavirus yesterday, marking the highest daily jump since the start of the pandemic. The average daily case rate is now 10 times higher than at any point during the first wave last year.
The Prime Minister yesterday urged extreme caution in virus hotspots around the country after an extra 14,212 positive tests were reported in London in the past 24 hours.
“There are areas of the country like London… where the disease has spread the broadest and the pressures on the NHS are the greatest,” Hancock said, adding that “it’s down to people’s behaviour” whether current Tier 4 measures in the capital are enough to curb the spread of the disease.
Primary schools in some parts of the country have defied government orders to reopen this morning and stayed closed, amid fears that a return to the classroom would see an exponential spread of the new coronavirus mutation among children.
All of London’s primary schools and some of those in surrounding areas will shutter until 18 January. Secondary schools within the 60 “contingency areas” earmarked by the government may remain closed to most pupils beyond that date.
All four of England’s main teaching unions over the weekend backed calls for schools to remain closed to all but eligible pupils.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has insisted that schools are safe and said councils should abide by advice to reopen in most English regions.
However, the PM did not rule out further closures on the horizon, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday that the situation was under constant review.
Noting that ministers are considering “tougher measures” to curb the spread of Covid-19, Johnson said: “Clearly school closures, which we had to do in March, is one of those things.”
“The priority has got to be children’s education,” he said. “[But] we’ve got to be humble in the face of the impact of this new variant of the virus.”
It comes as Labour leader Keir Starmer yesterday called for a national lockdown within 24 hours, warning the virus was “out of control”.
“There’s no good [in] the Prime Minister hinting that further restrictions are coming into place in a week, or two or three,” he said.
“That delay has been the source of so many problems. So, I say, bring in those restrictions now, national restrictions, within the next 24 hours. That has to be the first step to controlling the virus.”