Downing Street has confirmed on Thursday that the Prime Minister is “ready” to implement his Plan B and Boris Johnson has made preparations to impose extra restrictions.
The comes as the government’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance warned the government must be “absolutely prepared” to trigger extra restrictions and be ready to “move fast” when required to do so.
Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said, “One of the reasons we set out our autumn planning, including our plan B and including Covid certification, was so that we are able to act swiftly if required.
“I again emphasise we do not see anything in the statistics to suggest we currently need to implement it.
“As a responsible government we are making sure we are ready to act should it become necessary.”
But this has been dismissed by scientific experts and doctors that the NHS is “incredibly fragile” and vaccine immunity is waning.
Sir Patrick, said, “So the high level remains a concern and from a high level you can go up quite quickly.”
Sir Patrick told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the UK is in a “very uncertain phase of the pandemic and the government must be ready to “move fast” when required.
He warned, “There is considerable uncertainty into which direction this goes.
“I think we’ve got a pretty difficult winter ahead of us.”
Dr Chris Smith, from the University of Cambridge warned last week that the UK is already close to 100,000 cases per day.
Dr Smith told BBC Breakfast that around half of Covid cases are asymptomatic.
“So probably, with detected cases at 50,000, we’re probably already close to 100,000 cases a day anyway, we just don’t know about lots of them.
“We are looking very hard, we’re doing more than a million tests a day now, but probably we do have really high levels bordering on that sort of number at the moment.”
Professor Finn who is an expert in paediatrics, said 5m adults, mostly young adults, who have should now come forward if they have not had their vaccination.
He told LBC radio, “It’s the responsibility of adults to look after children by getting vaccinated and stopping spreading this virus around because there’s a lot more adults infecting children than there are children infecting adults.”
When he was asked if 100,000 cases a day should be seen as petrifying Professor Finn said, “Yes, it absolutely should.
Hospitalistions have reached a seven month high and are climbing and there has been a total of 140,041 deaths recorded which includes a further 207 on Wednesday.
Once the half-term is over and school children return it is expected that cases will steadily rise again.
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