As expected, the government has just announced more areas of England are to move to Tier 4 from Boxing Day in an attempt to slow the spread of the new variant of coronavirus. But rather more unexpectedly, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told this afternoon’s Downing Street press conference that a second, highly transmissible, new strain which ‘appears to have mutated further’ has been found in two people who were contacts of cases who had travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks.
Hancock was at pains to seem apologetic to those affected by the new restrictions, telling people in those areas that the government was ‘truly sorry’. He also insisted that ministers had moved fast whenever they received new information – something that is disputed by those working behind the scenes on the health service’s response to rising hospital admissions.
But there were questions he did not want to give a definitive answer to – presumably because he knows that it is better to leave wriggle room rather than to rule things out, as Boris Johnson often does before being forced to U-turn just a few days later. He did not rule out delaying schools re-opening still further. He also did not rule out most of England being in de facto lockdown by being placed into Tier 4 by January anyway as the new variant spread throughout the country.
He also – understandably – did not want to say when he thought the majority of the British population had been vaccinated and life could start to return to normal. He said:
‘We’ve always said that the vast majority of vaccinations will be in the new year… I think we will get there by the spring and people should therefore just hold on and really try to resist temptation to do things that they shouldn’t and to see people that they don’t need to.’
A lot of his language throughout the press conference was focused on encouraging people to stick with the restrictions a little longer until the vaccine programme had successfully rolled out. On the vaccine, the Health Secretary made an ‘announcement’ on the approval process for the Oxford immunisation – but just not the announcement everyone is waiting for. He merely told the briefing that the Oxford vaccine had submitted its full data package to the MHRA for approval. This does suggest that it will be approved shortly – but also that Hancock is worried that people are growing fatigued and is trying to reassure them that there is a real light at the end of the tunnel.
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