UK to outline early pub closing as virus alert level raised
LONDON, United Kingdom — The UK government will on Tuesday announce new measures to curb rising coronavirus cases across England, hours after upgrading the virus alert level with top advisers warning of a surging death toll within two months without immediate action.
Under new rules to come into force on Thursday, English pubs, bars and other hospitality venues will be required to close at 2100 GMT while food and drink outlets will be restricted to table service only.
"We know this won't be easy, but we must take further action to control the resurgence in cases of the virus," a Downing Street spokesperson said.
Similar restrictions are already in place across swathes of northern and central England.
Devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to unveil their own nationwide rules imminently.
The ramped-up response follows warnings on Monday that the country could see up to 50,000 cases a day by mid-October, and a month later exceed 200 deaths every day.
Chief medical officer Chris Whitty said rates of infection were replicating the strong resurgence seen in France and Spain, roughly doubling every seven days.
"We are seeing a rate of increase across the great majority of the country," he said, urging the public to respect stricter guidelines on social distancing," he said.
"This is not someone else's problem. It's all of our problem."
The government's Joint Biosecurity Centre later changed its Covid-19 alert level from three to four to reflect the increase in cases.
Level three states that the epidemic is in general circulation while level four reflects that "transmission is high or rising exponentially".
'Great concern'
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will chair a meeting of Britain's COBR emergencies committee Tuesday morning ahead of making a statement to parliament.
He will also address the nation on live television at around 1900 GMT to detail how the restrictions will help flatten the upward curve in cases going into the winter months when other respiratory infections are typically high.
Following widely shared weekend pictures of young revellers out in force in British cities, Johnson called the rising infection rates "a cause for great concern".
The country recorded another 4,368 cases on Monday, levels not seen since early May when the country was still in a stringent lockdown.
"The virus is spreading. We are at a tipping point," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament, adding: "We must all play our part in stopping the spread."
Almost 42,000 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have died in Britain, the worst death toll from the pandemic in Europe, despite the months-long shutdown that plunged the country into unprecedented recession.
After a summer lull, when the government urged the public to frequent pubs and restaurants to get the economy moving, cases have been rising rapidly.
Johnson last week said Britain was already seeing a second wave — in line with parts of Europe — and new localised restrictions were introduced affecting millions across northwest, northern and central England.
People in England who refuse to self-isolate to stop the spread of coronavirus could face fines of up to £10,000 ($13,000) under tough new regulations.
From September 28, people will also be legally obliged to self-isolate if they test positive or are told to by the National Health Service (NHS) tracing programme.
United approach?
The UK government in London controls health policy for England but the sector is a devolved issue for the administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
That has led to differing approaches to tackling the virus, including for quarantine for visitors from overseas.
Johnson's office said he had calls with Sturgeon and her counterparts in Cardiff and Belfast and they would all attend Tuesday's emergency meeting.
"They all agreed to act with a united approach, as much as possible, in the days and weeks ahead," a spokesman said.
The government in Cardiff earlier announced that three more areas of south Wales would be placed under local lockdown.
Meanwhile, no two households will be able to mix in Northern Ireland, the province's First Minister Arlene Foster said.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he had met local leaders in the capital Monday and would be asking the government to implement "a new London plan to slow the spread of the virus".
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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