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Tuesday 30 June 2020 12:23
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Non-essential shops have shut again in Leicester and schools will close to most pupils from Thursday after the government ordered the first local lockdown amid a rise in coronavirus cases.
The city will now not see the further easing of lockdown planned for the rest of England from Saturday, health secretary Matt Hancock said. Labour has demanded a No 10 press conference to explain the lockdown, following claims of delays in reacting to the emergence of new cases and a failure to communicate with local civic leaders.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile has warned “the worst is yet to come” as “globally the pandemic is actually speeding up” despite many countries making some progress.
Sir Peter said health secretary Matt Hancock also promised more testing for Leicester, where testing has been “pretty patchy” and not “sufficiently systematic to get a good picture of what’s happening.”
The mayor of Leicester said testing in the city has “gradually increased” since that conversation.
However he said his colleagues have had to spend “quite a lot of time persuading the people on the ground doing the testing that [Matt Hancock] said they should stay in Leicester” as “some of them were on occasions seeking to decamp to go and measure elsewhere”.
The mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby, has told a press conference he was “a little surprised” when the local lockdown was suggested by government because officials hadn’t been given any data to suggest there were any “particular issues” in the city at that point.
He said he had a virtual meeting with the secretary of state the following day, when he pushed for the figures that showed coronavirus cases had spiked in the city.
Sir Peter said it took “quite some time to get any decent data through to us” and it didn’t arrive until a week later.
The mayor said his colleagues are still working through the “mountain” of data they have now received to map it and see where in the community the virus is still active and might be spreading.
Professor Linda Bauld, professor of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, has said there is nothing to suggest people in Leicester have acted any differently to other parts of the country and that they should not be blamed for the spike in coronavirus infections.
She said: “It would be concerning if there was a narrative around the Leicester situation where fingers were pointed at local people.
“It would be wrong for them to be accused of not following guidance, or if it was suggested that the diversity of the area (with BAME communties) is to blame.
“Let’s be clear – the restrictions being re-introduced are not the fault of the local population.
“There is no evidence that their behaviour has been being ‘at odds’ with other parts of England.”
Prof Bauld said questions need to be asked about the “adequacy” of the UK government’s response to the entire crisis and where it has “failed the people of Leicester”.
Police in Leicester do not yet know what powers they will have to enforce Britain’s first “local lockdown”.
The health secretary announced enhanced restrictions in the Midlands city on Monday night following talks with local officials, but discussions on how to implement them continue.
The Leicestershire Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said officers were still awaiting confirmation of what their role would be this morning.
Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby & Wigston, on the outskirts of Leicester, called the new lockdown “very disruptive and everyone wishes it wasn’t happening” but welcomed the measures to help slow the area’s outbreak.
When asked whether he thought people would stick to the rules as other areas open up, he told PA news agency: “I think that people in Leicester and Leicestershire have got good common sense, they have been told that there is a deadly virus in danger of taking off in the city and I think that people will respect that and respond to it.”
He added: “Leicester, like a lot of other places that have had severe outbreaks, has a lot of multi-generational households.
“That creates a risk because you have older vulnerable people living with working people so we need to take extra care in Leicester and Leicestershire.”
The worst of the Covid-19 pandemic could be “yet to come”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned, as the number of reported cases across the globe continues to climb.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said some countries had experienced a “resurgence” in cases after reopening their economies, adding that the pandemic is “speeding up”.
He called for greater cooperation between world leaders to help limit transmission of the disease as countries begin reopening their borders following months of lockdown.
Labour has demanded a Downing Street press conference to explain the situation in Leicester, where lockdown rules are being reimposed after a spike in coronavirus cases.
When he called off the daily briefings last week, prime minister Boris Johnson said that in future press conferences would be held when the government had “something really important to say”.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said that the situation in Leicester fitted that description, with people demanding answers over claims of delays in reacting to the emergence of new cases and a failure to communicate with local civic leaders.
Strict social distancing rules will remain in place in the House of Commons despite the introduction of the “one-metre plus” approach in England in the coming days.
MPs will be ordered to stay two metres apart in parliament until the end of the summer recess, with a review of the measures when the Commons returns in September.
Hospitals in England saw almost three quarters of a million fewer patients admitted for treatments such as surgery during the height of the coronavirus outbreak, the head of the NHS has revealed.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons health select committee today, Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said there were 725,000 fewer elective, or planned, admissions to hospitals during March and April.
Over the past week, California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 200,000 known infections, and forcing governor Gavin Newsom to roll back the state’s reopening in some counties.
On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalised in California had risen 43 per cent over the past two weeks.
Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, surpassed 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in every 140 people, according to local health officials. More than 2,800 cases were announced in the county on Monday, the most of any day during the pandemic.
It looks as though the Leicester lockdown will extend beyond the city into several surrounding suburbs.
Leicestershire County Council has published a map showing the area the lockdown will cover.
A post code checker will be launched on the council’s website at some point for those living near the boundary.
Leicestershire Live political correspondent Dan Martin says the areas include:
Braunstone Town (including Fosse Park)
Glenfield
Glen Parva
Leicester Forest East (East of the M1)
Thorpe Astley
Birstall
Thurmaston
Drinkers in a town on the English and Welsh border will be able to return to the pub this weekend – but only at one end of the high street.
In Saltney, which is partly in Flintshire, north Wales, and partly in Cheshire, England, just one of the town’s four pubs will be allowed to open its doors again on Saturday while the others remain closed under the Welsh Government’s regulations.
Mandatory MOT testing is to be reintroduced from 1 August 2020 as lockdown restrictions are slowly lifted.
In March, drivers were granted a six-month exemption from MOT testing due to the coronavirus outbreak.
There were a total of 9,339 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to June 19, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 65 fewer than the five-year average of 9,404.
This was the first time the number of weekly deaths was below the five-year average since the week ending March 13.
The number of deaths in care homes and hospitals in the week to June 19 was also below the five-year average (49 and 782 deaths lower respectively), while the number of deaths in private homes was 827 higher than the five-year average.
Of those deaths registered in the week to June 19, 783 mentioned “novel coronavirus (Covid-19)” – the lowest number of deaths involving Covid-19 since the week ending March 27.
With several coronavirus vaccines currently at trial stage, White House coronavirus adviser and public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci has warned so many people in the US are likely to refuse vaccination that “herd immunity” may be hard to achieve.
The problem, he said, was that unlike certain others, a vaccine will probably not be fully effective on the individual level.
Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby has suggested the new lockdown in the city should have been brought in much sooner, as non-essential shops there closed today and schools must shut from Thursday.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he said: “[Matt Hancock] announced that he believed there was an outbreak in Leicester the best part of two weeks ago.
“Since then, we’ve been struggling to get information from them [the government] about what data they had, what led them to believe there was a particular problem here, and struggling to get them to keep the level of testing in Leicester.”
He added he has been trying “for weeks” to access data on the level of testing in the city and was only given access last Thursday.
When asked whether a local lockdown should have been brought in earlier, he said: “If, as seems to be the case, the figures suggest there are issues in the city, I would wish that they had shared that with us right from the start, and I wish they had taken a more speedy decision rather than leaving it 11 days from the Secretary of State’s first announcement…
PA
England’s roads are expected to be flooded with cars as 11 million drivers embark on post-lockdown overnight trips this weekend.
Some 31 per cent of motorists have indicated they will take advantage of relaxed lockdown rules to spend the night away from home, an RAC poll shows.
‘Be calm, be sensible’ when pubs reopen, urges Cressida Dick
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said her force has been planning for 4 July “for some time”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “You will see a lot of police officers out on the street. There will be a lot more ready should people be out of order, should people get violent. But I’m not predicting that at this stage.”
London has seen tensions flare during recent protests and a number of unlicensed music events.
Dame Cressida added: “My message is, if you’re coming out on Saturday, be calm, be sensible. Look after yourself, look after your family. We are still in a global pandemic which is affecting this country very obviously. People need to be sensible.”
Country star Chase Rice did not apologise for his audience breaking social distancing guidelines, as he responded to criticism for playing a concert amid a new coronavirus spike in Tennessee.
The musician came under fire after performing to a crowd of 1,000 fans at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary on Saturday 27 June, with footage shared by Rice on his Instagram showing a packed audience, many of whom were not wearing masks.
After being called “selfish” by fellow country music performer Kelsea Ballerini, Rice addressed the situation with a video shared to his Instagram on Monday in which he described having a “blast” but people online having a “problem” with it
Russia has reported 6,693 new cases of the novel coronavirus, taking its nationwide tally to 647,849.
The country’s coronavirus response centre said 154 people had died of the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 9,320.
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