COVID-19: England enters four-week lockdown amid second wave surge

Due to a surge in cases amid the second COVID-19 wave, UK’s government has imposed a four-week lockdown in England, effective November 5. Under the new restrictions in order to stem the dread of the fast-rising trajectory of the COVID-19 cases, the citizens were advised to stay at home as all non-essential businesses, shops, pubs and gyms were shut down. Assuring the citizens, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a live-streamed conference that the lockdown will end ‘automatically’ in a month. 

On November 4, the UK parliament voted for a lockdown in England with 516 to 39, a majority of 477, the BBC reported. The MPs decided to replace the three-tier regional restriction previously imposed and impose a statewide lockdown to bring the fast-spreading virus under control. Speaking ahead of the parliamentary vote UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a live-streamed address that the data he has presented and the worrying projections by the scientists and experts at UK's National Health Service (NHS) predict that UK’s healthcare systems would collapse and deaths could potentially exceed those recorded in the March and early April when the first wave hit the UK. Some hospitals are "already higher than at the peak of the first wave,” Johnson informed, adding, that the figures are “confronting”. 

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'I am not prepared' PM Johnson said

“When I look at what is happening now amongst some of our continental friends and see doctors who have tested positive being ordered, alas, to work on Covid wards, and patients airlifted to hospitals in some other countries simply to make space, I can reach only one conclusion: I am not prepared to take the risk with the lives of the British people," Johnson said in an address streamed online as UK recorded the second-largest daily spike with 25,177 new infections within 24 hours and 492 fatalities. Meanwhile, according to the NHS’s estimates, the hospitalizations in the UK rose to an alarming 12,320. According to WHO, Europe has suddenly recorded a spike of 43 percent in deaths and a 22 percent surge in the  COVID-19 caseload. 

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