UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday has announced a new nationwide lockdown, until at least mid-February to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus strain which is highly transmissible.
The new nationwide lockdown, which includes the closure of primary and secondary schools, will come into effect Wednesday, PM Boris Johnson said in a televised address, after Scotland announced similar measures would come into force from midnight (0000 GMT) on Tuesday.
Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives. pic.twitter.com/PUN79POzAw
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) January 4, 2021
“As I speak to you tonight our hospitals are under more pressure from Covid than at any time,” said Johnson.
“It’s clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control. In England, we must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to combat this variant. That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home,” he said.
He further added that as of Monday, almost 27,000 people with Covid were in the hospital — 40 percent more than at the peak of the first wave of the outbreak in April last year.
Meanwhile, India has reported 16,504 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, placing its overall number at 1.03 crore cases, the Health Ministry’s data showed.
The number of fresh infections is 9 percent lower than on Sunday. In this period, India reported 214 deaths linked to the virus, taking the total number of fatalities to 1,49,649.
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