Leicester is heading back into lockdown and as of today non-essential shops are now closed as there have been 944 confirmed cases in the last two weeks across the city.
The spike in cases has prompted Health Secretary Matt Hancock to impose an extension to the lockdown and will be changing the law this week.
Hancock said, “We will be bringing forward a legal change very shortly in the next couple of days.
“Some of the measures that we’ve unfortunately had to take in Leicester will require a legal underpinning.”
The Health Secretary said that in “some cases” the lockdown will be enforced by the police, as a total of 10% of all positive cases across England have come from the Midlands the last two weeks.
All pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants and hairdressers are to remain closed, and the public who live in Leicester have been advised against all but essential travel.
Hancock was
Leicester Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby hit out at the government and said the city should have been placed on lockdown two weeks ago.
He told BBC Breakfast, “The Secretary of State [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.”
Sir Peter was asked, should a localised lockdown been introduced earlier, he replied, “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…
“That’s a long gap, and a long time for the virus to spread.”
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