The COVID-restrictions extension.

MP’s have voted to extending the coronavirus regulations by four weeks, giving our NHS time to accelerate our vaccine programme and save lives.

  • This was not an easy decision for the government and MPs to make and will have disappointed many people.
  • When the government set out the roadmap to freedom a few months ago, they were very clear that they would be driven by data rather than dates and determined to make progress that was cautious but irreversible.
     
  • There were a set of tests set our for each stage of relaxation, and Britain has not met all four tests to proceed with the next step of the roadmap. So the government felt they had to propose a delay in moving to Step 4 by four weeks until 19 July, giving our NHS more time to administer the lifesaving vaccines, and slow the spread of the Delta variant. This decision has been confirmed by parliament.
     
  • Now is the time to ease off the accelerator, because by being cautious, we have the chance in the next four weeks to save many thousands of lives by vaccinating millions more people.

Comments

Jim said…
"There were a set of tests set our for each stage of relaxation, and Britain has not met all four tests to proceed with the next step of the roadmap"

Now we are into "the 5 economic tests for the euro" territory.

I really cant see why the people who are receiving these massive taxpayer cheques whilst there is a pandemic are advising to slow down until the delta varient from india, then the echo varient from bangladesh will make an appearance, then it will be "oh foxtrot its covid from mars"

The vaccine either works or it does not, if it does not then why are they rolling it out still, if it does then there is no need to carry on with restrictions.

5:02 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
It's not a binary "It works" = total immunity versus "It doesn't work" = no effect at all.

The actual situation is in between - the vaccine does massively reduce the risk from COVID-19 without totally eliminating it.

Clearly we are going to keep getting new variants of this damn bug and for some time we are going to learn to live with it.

One aspect of doing that must be to get as close to full vaccination coverage as we can.

I don't see permanent lockdowns as part of the solution, and a lot of restrictions have already been removed, but it doesn't look unreasonable to me to get to the position where all adults who are willing to be vaccinated have been before we remove the remaining restrictions.

Another four weeks will do that.
4:11 pm
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