City leaders across England and SAGE all say Boris tier system ‘just isn’t working’

The government’s own scientific advisory group along with MPs and many other city leaders across England are all saying that Boris Johnson’s three tier system “just isn’t working.”

Birmingham’s council leader Ian Ward has called for an immediate circuit breaker lockdown and said that the tier system “just isn’t working.”

It has been widely reported that Birmingham could be moving into tier 3 measures “imminently.”

Ward warned, “Areas in Tier 3 are still seeing rising cases. “I am of the opinion England needs to follow France, Germany and Wales with a national circuit-breaker as quickly as possible.

“We must not repeat the mistake of last March in not moving soon enough.”

Sheffield’s city region Mayor Dan Jarvis warned that they are seeing a steady rise in hospital admissions.

He said that there are 700 people in hospital in South Yorkshire which is double compared to the first peak in spring.

Because hospitals planned for a second wave, they are currently coping,” but we risk them becoming “overwhelmed.”

Jarvis added, “The situation remains precarious and if COVID cases continue to rise and hospitalisations increase, we risk our hospitals and the people who work in them being overwhelmed.”

The government’s scientific advisory group SAGE, released minute from the latest meeting on 14 October which reveals England has now “breached the reasonable wort-case scenario.”

SAGE said that there is no clear evidence that the virus’s trajectory has changed over the past month, and the number of daily deaths are in line with their scenario.

But in a very grim warning, they have said that the death rate over the “next two week” will “almost certainly exceed this.”

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) more than 560,000 people were confirmed to have had coronavirus last week.

Around one in 100 had the virus between 17 and 23 October, and cases increased to 51,900 each day in England last week.

Professor Dominic Harrison, who is the director of public health at Blackburn with Darwen borough council, told the Guardian newspaper that he government’s current approach to the virus is the “worst of all possible outcomes.”

He added, “To put it bluntly, we’re going to need a much harsher set of control measures that look very much more like the first total lockdown, and very much more like what France is doing.”

Professor Harrison said he believed that a national lockdown would happen in about a fortnight. 

Medical and scientific experts are warning that there needs to be a change before Christmas as they estimate almost 100,000 people per day are becoming infected.

They have said that the current measures the government has put in place are “not sufficient” as the pandemic is “growing exponentially.”

Sir Jeremy Farrar, who sits on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), has said the UK “cannot continue to just observe and not act.”

In a tweet, he wrote: “U.K delayed in March resulting one of worst outcomes globally. Sept/Oct we have had all the data, trajectory epidemic clear + experience first wave & other countries.

“Delaying is itself a decision with consequences.”