UK parliament recalled amid ‘rapidly escalating’ coronavirus cases

LONDON — The U.K. House of Commons will be recalled on Wednesday after the government said “further steps” were needed to arrest a rapid rise in coronavirus cases across the country.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will make a televised address on the matter at 8 p.m.

The U.K. has seen a dramatic spike in cases driven by the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus that was first identified late last year and is estimated by health authorities to be up to 70 percent more transmissible. The country has seen several days of recorded caseloads above 50,000 and there are now more people in hospitals in England than at any other point during the pandemic.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The spread of the new variant of COVID-19 has led to rapidly escalating case numbers across the country. The prime minister is clear that further steps must now be taken to arrest this rise and to protect the NHS and save lives.”

House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said the Commons would meet at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, but urged MPs not to physically attend the sitting “unless absolutely necessary due to the severe public health situation,” the Times reported.

MPs are given a vote on major national restrictions and it is possible that Johnson will announce new England-wide measures. After the national lockdown in November, the country returned to its regionalized tier system of restrictions, which had to be reinforced just before Christmas with a more stringent “tier four” following the emergence of the new strain.

Seventy-eight percent of England’s population is already under tier four measures and Johnson said as recently as Sunday that he wanted to see whether these were “going to work in driving the virus down.” It is unclear what new measures will be brought in.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Monday called for the government to “close schools, borders, and ban all household mixing right away.”

In Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Monday announced new measures to come in at midnight including a new legal requirement to stay at home for all but essential purposes and the closure of schools to the majority of pupils until February.

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