In a televised address to all UK people on the evening of January 4, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted that hospitals in the UK are under the greatest pressure since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the UK in March 2020. In some parts of the country, the number of new cases has increased by nearly a third in the past week and is 40% higher than the peak of the pandemic in April 2020.
Boris Johnson said that the British government had no choice but to strictly re-block the entire territory in order to control the virus, while waiting for the Covid-19 vaccination campaign to bring about positive effects.
During the third national blockade, British people will also have to abide by relatively harsh restrictions. All residents are asked to stay indoors, work remotely, and point out the way when it is critical. Britons who are vulnerable to Covid-19 are also required to re-establish the layers of protection as before and will receive detailed government instructions. All UK schools will also be closed.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the coming weeks will be extremely difficult for the British people but hopefully the UK can remove the blockade from mid-February 2021.
“If our understanding of the virus doesn’t suddenly change, if the vaccination campaign succeeds and lowers mortality and most importantly, if everyone follows the rules then I hope the country You can gradually remove the blockade from mid-February 2021, reopen schools and cautiously return regions to lower alert levels.”
Before Boris Johnson issued the announcement of the national blockade, a number of other territories in the UK had previously adopted this extreme measure. Northern Ireland and Wales applied the blockade shortly after the end of Christmas, while Scotland also re-sealed the block on the evening of January 4.
Scientific and medical officials in the UK said that the Covid-19 epidemic in the UK is now even more serious than in April 2020 when the number of cases exploded, partly due to a mutation of the SARS virus- CoV-2 is inherently 50-70% more infectious than the old virus.
On January 4, the UK recorded nearly 59,000 new cases, the 7th consecutive day the country had more than 50,000 cases per day. With more than 75,000 deaths, the UK is also the country with the loss of life because Covid-19 is the second highest in Europe, after Italy.
All UK hopes for epidemic control are now in the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. On January 4, the vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford began to be used. The UK has ordered 100 million doses of this vaccine and plans to vaccinate all populations at risk such as the elderly, health workers … within the first 12 weeks of 2021./.