In an interview on the BBC’s “The Andrew Marr Show”, Johnson was pressured about whether the restrictions currently in effect in the most affected areas of England were doing enough, as hospitals are full of Covid-19 patients.
“It may be that we need to do things in the coming weeks that will be more difficult in many parts of the country. I am totally reconciled to that,” said Johnson. “I bet the people of this country are reconciled to that,” he added.
Pressed to elaborate what those tougher restrictions could be, Johnson said: “There are obviously a number of tougher measures that we would have to consider. I don’t want to speculate, I won’t speculate now on what they would be.
“Clearly, the closure of schools we had to do in March is one of those things (…),” he added, while controversy over the government’s confused messages about the reopening of schools continues to dominate the headlines.
Echoing his warning on the same program in October last year, Johnson warned, “It’s bumpy and it’s going to be bumpy.”
But the prime minister insisted that by spring the situation across the country should be improving as more people are vaccinated.
Under the current system, most of England falls under the strictest Tier 3 and Tier 4 restrictions – with the latter in effect for all of London – with a strict stay-at-home message.
On Saturday, the UK recorded the biggest daily increase in coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, with an additional 57,725 new cases of coronavirus and 445 deaths. The country is among the hardest hit in Europe, with more than 2.6 million infections in total and almost 75,000 deaths.
But some scientists have warned that stricter measures are needed if a new, more infectious variant of the virus, which has spread in recent weeks in London, southeastern England and parts of Wales in particular, must be controlled.
Some London hospitals are now nearly two-thirds filled with Covid-19 patients, said the chairman of the Royal College of Physicians, Andrew Goddard, on Saturday.
Both primary and secondary schools in London and some other parts of south-east England will remain closed for at least the next two weeks for face-to-face learning, except for vulnerable students and children of critical workers. The return of high school students was delayed across England.
Mass vaccination hopes
The UK government is pinning its hopes on a return to some sort of normality in a rapid vaccine implementation, prioritizing the elderly and those who are clinically vulnerable, as well as health and social care workers.
Asked about the number of doses available for the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which was approved by UK regulators on Wednesday, Johnson told Marr that 530,000 doses would be ready to be administered starting on Monday, in addition to “about a million” Pfizer / BioNTechCovid-19 vaccine already distributed.
However, he was unable to say how many doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine were ready to be administered.
“We hope to be able to make tens of millions [of Covid-19 vaccines] in the next three months, I can certainly give that number, “said the prime minister.
Johnson said that this strategy depended on the use of three vaccines, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines – both approved in the UK last month – and the Modern vaccine, which would be ready for use “soon”.
Echoing what he said on the same show in October last year, Johnson said, “I thought things would be better until spring. I just keep going.”
Earlier on Sunday, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted that the country administered 1 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, saying “the end is in sight”.
Lots of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine began arriving in hospitals ready for use as of Monday.
The vaccine is cheaper and easier to distribute than the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine because it can be kept at normal refrigerator temperatures for at least six months. Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines should be stored frozen.
New threat variant
Scotland’s Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted on Sunday that her cabinet would meet the next day to “consider further action to limit the spread” of the most contagious variant that increased infection rates in England – and that she would call Parliament to hear your decision.
“We, like other countries, are in a race between this fastest-spreading Covid strain and the vaccination program,” she said.
“All decisions are now difficult, with difficult impacts. Vaccines give us a way out, but this new strain makes the period between now (and) then the most dangerous since the beginning of the pandemic. Therefore, the government’s responsibility must be to act quickly (and) decisively in the national interest, ”he said.
Johnson resisted Marr’s suggestion that his government had not fully prepared for the winter’s challenges and the possibility of a mutation in the coronavirus, despite being warned of the threats in a government-commissioned document in July.
“This government has taken all possible measures to prepare the country for the consequences of the winter,” said Johnson. “What we could not have predicted, I think, reasonably, was the arrival of a new variant of the virus, which spread between 50 and 70% faster. As soon as we understood this on, I think, December 18th … we took decisive action. “
As of January 1, at least 30 countries, including the United States, had reported cases of the most infectious coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom.
There is no evidence that the variant is more deadly or causes more serious illness, according to health officials.