Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that a coronavirus lockdown change is on the way and has hinted they could be regional, as more virus clusters breakout across England.
Johnson is drafting new legislation for England now the alert level has dropped from four to three, which means there could be more localised lockdowns, rather than it being nationwide.
Johnson told Sky News, “I think that’s what the public also want to see.
“They want to see us working with the reality.
“We’re moving now from a world in which we have to impose a huge one size fits all national lockdown program to one in which we’re able to do more localised responses.
“The JBC announced the change in the alert level is working with our test and trace operation to do local whack a mole.
“watch this space.”
Johnson added, “We will be putting in further changes as the science allows.”
This comes as there are second wave fears in Leicester as the City’s public health director said that there have been 658 confirmed cases in two weeks, which are “relatively small,” but worrisome.
Official data shows that 25% of Leicester’s 2,494 coronavirus cases happened over the last two weeks.
Health Secretary Mat Hancock said yesterday that there is an “outbreak right now in parts of Leicester,” and also referenced further clusters of cases in West Yorkshire.
A meet processing plant in Yorkshire have had an outbreak, and Asda said on Thursday evening they will temporarily close the factory.
In a statement the factory said, “As soon as we became aware that some colleagues at our Kober site may have Covid-19, we responded swiftly and worked collaboratively with the local authority and Public Health England to test all colleagues.
“We have also voluntarily closed the site to protect colleagues and prevent any further transmission.
“Colleagues who need to self-isolate will receive full pay and we aim to reopen the facility early next week.”
Speaking of the alert level being downgrade, Professor Matt Keeling, of Warwick University said, “The move to level three is not a time for complacency, there is still the prospect of a second wave if controls are relaxed too quickly and the reproductive number (R) rises above one.
“We are likely to be entering a new phase of this outbreak, where nationally and regionally cases will continue to decline, but locally there will be isolated clusters of cases that need to be contained.”
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