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The U.K.’s chief scientific adviser said Thursday that government modeling suggests up to 90,000 people may be being infected with coronavirus each day, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his “balanced” approach to the pandemic.
Facing opposition from all sides, the prime minister told reporters a full, so-called circuit-breaker lockdown — supported by Labour leader Keir Starmer — isn’t “the right course, right now.” Responding to the small number of Tory MPs who propose lifting restrictions and focusing on protecting the vulnerable, Johnson said it would be impossible to protect the elderly.
“We’re going for a balanced approach, a middle course between the Scylla of another national lockdown and the Charybdis of an uncontrolled virus,†Johnson said, referring to Homer’s sea monsters who lived on either side of narrow strait, forcing sailors to navigate a rock shoal on one side and a whirlpool on the other.
“[This is] a regional and local approach now being followed by some of those countries most successful in tackling the virus,” he added.
Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said that the U.K.’s latest modeling suggested between 53,000 and 90,000 people day could be infected with the virus. Last month he said the U.K. likely saw 100,000 cases a day during the peak of the first wave.
The government has come under increased pressure to introduce a circuit-breaker lockdown, after both Wales and Northern Ireland announced they were introducing one.
Johnson has so far resisted calls to introduce a nation-wide lockdown, instead continuing with the tiered system of regional restrictions. His Chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced extra financial support earlier Thursday for businesses hit by regional restrictions.
The prime minister also conceded that the U.K.’s test-and-trace system needed to improve: “I share people’s frustrations and I understand totally why we do need to see faster turnaround times and we need to improve it,” he said.
Vallance also told reporters it was too early to say if Christmas could go ahead as normal. Asked to respond to Scottish medical adviser Jason Leitch’s claim that Scots should plan for a “digital Christmas,” Vallance said the public will “need to wait and see.”
“A lot depends on what happens now over the next few weeks, at the moment the numbers are headed in the wrong direction but there are some signs in places of a potential flattening off. We need to wait and see and monitor the numbers very carefully.”
