Matt Hancock has just announced that London and the surrounding area will be put into Tier 3 from one minute past midnight on Wednesday. Hancock said that government scientists had identified a new strain of Covid that they think might be behind the more rapid spread of the virus in the south east in recent weeks. Alarming as this sounds, he did emphasise that it doesn’t seem to cause more serious illness and there’s no reason to think it won’t respond to the vaccine.
The news of this strain does raise further questions about the Christmas easing. The risk now is that as people head home for the holidays they will carry this new, more rapidly spreading strain of the virus around the country — and that could make the situation worse in January.
There is no good answer to the Christmas question. Attempting to maintain the current rules over the festive period would have risked mass disobedience.
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