More than 75 per cent of England will be in the top tier of coronavirus restrictions from midnight after Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced a large number of areas would move up into Tier 4. This is part of an attempt to contain the spread of the new variant of Covid-19, as hospitals come under what Hancock described as ‘significant pressure’ to treat surging numbers of patients with the virus.
Hancock was speaking on what he described as a day of ‘mixed emotions’, and he was naturally keen to emphasise the difference that the approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine would make to the length of time people will be subject to these restrictions. He told MPs: ‘It brings forward the day on which we can lift the restrictions that no one in this house wants to see.’ That this reassurance was necessary was underlined by the number of Tory MPs who asked for more clarity on how soon restrictions could end.
The focus of Tory MPs who are upset with the way the government is handling the pandemic is now moving to whether the vaccine programme can be sped up to the extent that the end of the tier system is just weeks away. Mark Harper, who is chair of the Conservative Covid Recovery Group, asked if the rollout of the vaccination programme could match the capacity of the manufacturers who are able to produce 2 million doses a week, which he argued would mean that the most vulnerable would have received their jabs by the third week of February. ‘Every focus of government now has to be focused on that task,’ he argued.
Hancock was happy to agree with Harper and others that the end of the restrictions is in sight. But he said he couldn’t say when precisely this would be. Where he was rather more uncomfortable was on the detail of how the NHS would be able to deal with the current pressure. He skipped a question from Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth about the Nightingale hospitals and was similarly vague on the matter of doctors being asked to use oxygen supplies sparingly. Even if there are just weeks left of restrictions, the health service is likely to emerge from this third wave in a state from which it will take years to recover.
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