UK may reinstate some lockdown measures if situation becomes 'unacceptable'

(Sharecast News) - The UK might reinstate some lockdown measures if the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic becomes unacceptable.
In remarks to Sky News, government minister, Lucy Frazer, said: "Of course if we get into a situation where it's unacceptable and we do need to put back further restrictions, then that of course is something the government will look at."

At a virtual summit earlier on Friday, leading scientists and government advisors from around the globe had said that Britain was heading towards disaster with its plan to lift all restrictions on 19 July.

Furthermore, two days before, over 1,200 medical experts, including the UK's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, had published a letter in The Lancet saying the government's plans were "dangerous and premature".

In their judgement, opening up the economy should be delayed until "everyone, including adolescents, have been offered vaccination and uptake is high."

Several of those experts called attention to the risk that new variants might appear which, like Delta, might still be able to infect even fully vaccinated people.

For her part, Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit UCL said: "And because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the world - we saw it with alpha, and I'm absolutely sure that we contributed to the rise of delta through Europe and North America.

"The UK policy doesn't just affect us, it affects everybody - everybody has a stake in what we do."