EPIDEMIC: According to a study by the National Statistics Office, nearly 60,000 people (59,800) in England were infected with the coronavirus in the week of September 4th to 10th, or one in 900
The United Kingdom is facing a “second wave” of the new coronavirus, warned the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, while the transmission rate is now between 1.1 and 1.4, implying an acceleration of contaminations. “There is no doubt, as I have been saying for several weeks now, that we could expect a second wave and that we are now seeing one arrive,” said the conservative leader on Friday.
The country, the hardest hit in Europe with nearly 42,000 dead, is facing, like several of its neighbours, an outbreak of the virus. “The number of hospitalized patients infected with the coronavirus is doubling every eight days,” the British Minister of Health said recently. According to a study by the National Statistics Office, nearly 60,000 people (59,800) in England were infected with the virus during the week of September 4th to 10th, or one in 900.
Boris Johnson did not rule out further tightening local restrictions
“We are seeing this second wave in France, Spain, across Europe. I fear it was absolutely inevitable that we would see it in this country, ” added Boris Johnson, as he visited the construction site of a vaccine centre in Didcot, near Oxford.
Boris Johnson did not rule out further tightening local restrictions that are growing at the local level in England, where it is forbidden to gather with more than six, but he said he wanted to avoid a new national lockdown, devastating for the economy.
Asked on Friday about press reports suggesting the hypothesis of confinement for a period of two weeks during the school holidays which begin in mid-October, the Minister of Health Matt Hancock explained on the BBC that the government “wants to avoid national containment but we are ready to do so if necessary to protect lives. And to point out that the government could use other local restrictions, as it did again Thursday in some localities in the North East of England.
Meetings between people from different homes prohibited
Entered into force Friday, the measures, which affect two million people, notably prohibit meetings between people from different homes and introduce a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. in places of entertainment. The introduction of these same measures from Tuesday was announced Friday in several localities in the North West of England and in particular in Liverpool, a city which alone has 500,000 inhabitants.
In total, more than ten million people live in areas affected by local restrictions in the UK, according to UK media estimates. She points out that the highest rates of infection are in the North West and London.
