Raab says there are ‘no guarantees’ over Christmas Covid restrictions
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has said the government “can’t make hard, fast guarantees” that there will not be a Christmas lockdown.
The government is keeping the possibility of new restrictions under constant review Raab today told BBC Radio 4.
The Prime Minister has been presented with three possible options for further restrictions which range from a plea for multiple households not to mix at Christmas which is not legally enforcement to a full blown lockdown the Telegraph first reported. Johnson is also mulling option two, which would introduce curbs on household mixing, the return of social distancing and an 8pm curfew on pubs and restaurants.
“I’m not going to trail things when decisions haven’t been made,” he said, when asked whether England should expect more restrictions in the next few days. Raab refused to rule out a Christmas covid restrictions and said “we’ve said we can’t make hard fast guarantees,” when pressed.
“The acceleration of the booster makes that much less likely,” he added. “But ultimately, in answer to your question, it depends on the severity of the Omicron cases and you know that there’s a time lag between reported cases, hospitalisations and the deaths.”
“It’s fair to say we have to keep the evidence reviewed on an hour-by-hour and day-by-day basis,” he said.
The comments echo those of Health Secretary Sajid Javid who yesterday said there are “no guarantees” that Christmas covid restrictions will not be introduced.
The impetus for new restrictions comes from concerns that the NHS will be overwhelmed by an influx of patients and staff absences if further measures are not taken. The NHS are becoming increasingly concerned with absentee rates, after they increased 140 per cent in a week.
The British Medical Association urged the government to bring in new restrictions after revealing that warned that without new restrictions almost 50,000 doctors, nurses and other NHS staff in England could be off sick with Covid-19 on Christmas day.
Pushback
Oxford professor Professor Carl Heneghan called for a lockdown to be avoided, warning that “it’s becoming clearer all that ministers see is the worst-case scenario.”
Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, told the BBC’s Today Programme that the country was in “deep, deep trouble” if it entered into “annual winter lockdowns”, adding that “this is as good as it gets when you consider the predictable rise in winter pathogens at this time of the year.”
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