UK imposes national blockade as new Covid-19 strain spreads

The imposition of a third national block came after government chief doctors warned that the most contagious strain was spreading rapidly across the country and that some hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed in three weeks if new restrictions were not implemented.

There are now more patients with Covid-19 in British hospitals than at the height of the spring pandemic. Johnson said the fight against the virus has reached a critical stage. “Of course, we need to do more together to get this new variant under control,” he said.

The British government is engaged in a logistical race as it tries to vaccinate its population to reduce the spread of the virus and protect vulnerable people. Britain acted more quickly than other European nations to approve and launch Covid-19 vaccines. So far, over a million people have received a Covid-19 vaccine in the UK

However, the new variant of the virus has been present in the country since December and is spreading rapidly, warned UK government scientists. Johnson said the scientists estimated it was 50% to 70% more transmissible than previous variants.

Epidemiologists model that preventing the virus from spreading exponentially will require the immunization of about two million people a week and strict restrictions on social distance. Raising concerns is the arrival of another highly contagious mutation of the virus from South Africa.

Infection rates in the UK have already started to rise. The number of people tested positive for Covid-19 doubled last week to 366,000 on Monday. The number of hospitalizations increased by 30% in one week. The number of deaths in the week increased by a quarter to 4,228.

The escalation to the last blockade was marked by Johnson gradually tightening the rules amid the clamor of scientific advisers who said the British system of regional restrictions was not working. As early as Sunday, Mr. Johnson was asking parents to send their children to school whenever possible.

The government postponed the announcement of a stricter national blockade, pending evidence of how the stricter social restrictions in the south of the country affected the spread of the virus.

Earlier Monday, Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon acted to put Scotland on hold until the end of January.

With the launch of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford on Monday, government officials are hopeful that vaccination rates could increase significantly in the second half of the month. Britain has set up nearly 1,000 mass injection sites across the country and has called on thousands of retired nurses and doctors to administer the vaccines. The government is rushing to inoculate the 13 million Britons who are considered to be the most exposed to the virus.

“We are now launching the largest vaccination program in our history,” said Johnson. By mid-February, everyone at greatest risk of contracting the virus must have received an injection of vaccine, he said. At that point, many restrictions can be removed, said Johnson.

Both the AstraZeneca-Oxford injection and the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc.

and BioNTech SE, which was approved in the UK in early December, require two doses to be fully effective.

In the midst of a supply bottleneck, Britain is trying to provide more vaccine to more people, increasing the time between the first and the second dose, in the hope of giving more people some immunity, giving an injection to more people before receive a second.

At the end of last month, Britain’s chief doctors wrote to health professionals arguing that allowing a 12-week break between injections would ensure that more people receive a basic level of protection. “As with all decisions during this pandemic, it is about balancing risks and benefits,” they wrote.

Some experts question whether the data supports this approach. Pfizer said there is no data to prove that a single dose of its vaccine offers protection after 21 days. But a committee advising the British government on vaccination and immunization said last month that there was no evidence that the Pfizer injection acted differently from the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines, the last of which saw a strong immune response after a longer interval between the vaccines.

Even with higher vaccination rates, restrictions are likely to be needed for some time. A study by Imperial College London found that the new mutant variant of the coronavirus increases the number “R” – or the number of people, on average, that each infected person starts to infect – by 0.4 to 0.7. This may negate the effect of restrictions on social distance that existed in much of the country before Monday.

This is the third time that the United Kingdom has entered a national blockade. The blockages were already implemented in the UK in March and November to slow the spread of the virus.

“Now, more than ever, we must work together,” said Johnson. “We are entering the last phase of the fight”.

Write to Max Colchester at [email protected]