Coronavirus in the United Kingdom: the new strict containment is in place until MARCH

Sylvie Claire / January 5, 2021

The new containment put in place in England in the face of the surge in contamination due to the new variant of the coronavirus will not begin to be lifted until March, a British government minister warned on Tuesday.

As we move into (the month of) March, we should be able to lift some of these restrictions, but not necessarily all of them, Michael Gove, head of government action coordination, warned on Sky News.

We will do everything we can to ensure that as many people as possible are vaccinated, so that we can start to gradually lift the restrictions, he said.

Faced with the alarming progression of the new variant of the virus, 50 to 70% more contagious according to British scientists, and the risk of submersion of the health system, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has extended the containment already applied to three quarters of the population English to the whole province and hardened it

Schools, left open until now, have closed. By mid-February, authorities hope to have vaccinated all people over 70 as well as caregivers, or around 13 million people most at risk, thanks to an acceleration of the vaccination campaign that began on December 8. and now conducted with two vaccines, Pfizer / BioNTech and AstraZeneca / Oxford.

The more effective the vaccination program, the easier it will be to lift these restrictions, insisted the minister, announcing very, very difficult weeks ahead.

Legally, containment is to go into effect as of Wednesday at 12:01 am local time and GMT, but Boris Johnson called on the population to follow the rules immediately. Parliament will debate it on Wednesday. The population is only allowed to go out for essential reasons, such as shopping or for medical reasons. As during the first containment in the spring and unlike the second in November, schools closed and switched to distance education on Tuesday.

With more than 75,000 dead, the United Kingdom is one of the countries in Europe most bereaved by Covid-19 and the trend has worsened in recent weeks. The contaminations published each day exceed 50,000, and were even close to 59,000 on Monday.