Lockdown

Scotland’s grim reputation for abnormally high drug fatalities has become embedded in the public consciousness over the past year. The fact that fake benzodiazepines (‘street valium’) can be procured for 50p a pill on the streets of Dundee and Glasgow is now common knowledge, as is Scotland’s unenviable place at the top of Europe’s drug deaths league table. However, belated attention to this crisis should not allow signs of another to slip below the radar. New figures from National Records of Scotland (NRS) show a 17 per cent surge in alcohol-specific deaths between 2019 and 2020, a rise from 1,020 to 1,190 in the space of 12 months, what NRS

Many experts and modellers thought that the 19 July reopening would be a disaster. So far, that has not been the case. Daily case numbers actually started falling within days after 19 July, although that was far too soon to have been caused by anything to do with ‘freedom day’. The question now is how the pandemic will play out for the rest of this year and the next? In trying to understand this, we need to understand some important things about the biology of coronaviruses and their interaction with their hosts: us. Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, is not going away. Like other coronaviruses, it will likely infect

You always remember when a prime minister calls you to ask you to take on a new role, and you remember the reaction of your loved ones, too. My mum was delighted — like many Asian mothers she wanted at least one of her five sons to be a doctor and she was thrilled that I would be, as she put it, ‘working in healthcare’ after all these years. My wife was concerned about the pressures of the role and what it might mean for our family. And my daughter was worried that I might not look the pinnacle of health walking through the famous Downing Street door, due to

On the day that nearly all legal Covid restrictions go, one could be forgiven for presuming ministers would be in the mood for celebration. Instead the press conference Boris Johnson led this afternoon to mark so-called freedom day proved a sombre affair. The Prime Minister was forced to dial in remotely after having to self isolate as a result of coming into close contact with the Health Secretary last week, who has since tested positive for Covid. From his self isolation, Johnson went on to unveil plans for vaccine passports for nightclubs and contingency plans to keep the country moving as millions face self isolation in the coming weeks. Johnson said some precautions

In a Science Museum webinar yesterday, Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, warned about the increasing number of people in hospital and said that, if in the next five to eight weeks ‘things are not topping out, we do have to look again and see where we think things are going.’  He added that ‘we’ve still got 2,000 people in hospital and that number is increasing. If we double from 2,000 to 4,000 from 4,000 to 8,000…and so on, it doesn’t take many doubling times until you’re in very, very large numbers indeed.’  If new restrictions are imposed as schools go back, the government will find itself in the worst political position

A very strange ‘freedom day’ greets us on Monday. Legally, almost all restrictions will be lifted. But practically, ministers are deeply worried by the surge of the Indian variant and the rise of hospitalisations to around 600 a day — a figure that will probably double according to the Bristol University PCCF project (which we at The Spectator find to be the most reliable). Hence this massive fudge: the government abolishing the mask mandate but saying it ‘expects’ people to wear them in shops and crowded spaces nonetheless. The NHS will continue to mandate them in hospitals. Then perhaps the biggest surprise: the vaccine passport U-turn whereby companies are told

How different will life be after 19 July? Not very, if the Prime Minister’s press conference this evening was anything to go by. As with Sajid Javid’s statement in the Commons earlier confirming the final step of the road map, Boris Johnson’s emphasis seemed muted. He said he expected people to continue wearing masks, working from home and generally not making the full use of the freedoms they are being given next week. Johnson warned that ‘this is not the end of Covid’, that he didn’t want the public to be ‘demob happy’ and that we ‘must be cautious’ as we take the next step out of the restrictions. Significantly, Johnson didn’t

Is the government having a wobble over ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July? Well, for one thing you won’t hear ministers talking about ‘Freedom Day’ over the next week. Instead, they are preferring to focus on the need for people to be very cautious, given the soaring numbers of cases and hospitalisations. When he appeared on Times Radio this morning, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi talked far more about what would still be ‘expected’ of people after 19 July than about how the roadmap was working and how nice it was for life to be returning to normal. For him, this date seems to be more ‘Be very careful day’. For Nadhim

The long-awaited easing of restrictions will not be the triumphant moment that many expected back in May. The Delta variant has seen to that. Increasing infection numbers have made the government nervous about the reopening. From 19 July, ministers will be busy trying to look responsible — consciously putting on their masks in crowded spaces — instead of being photographed gleefully enjoying the return of various freedoms. If case numbers are, as Boris Johnson has predicted they might be, at 50,000 a day and rising on 19 July — and even the double-vaccinated still have to isolate for ten days if they come into contact with an infected person (which