New restrictions including a 10pm curfew for pubs and restaurants could remain in place for six months as the UK battles coronavirus, prime minister Boris Johnson has said.
The prime minister announced a swathe of new measures, including a requirement for pub and shop workers and taxi passengers to wear face-coverings, a limit of 15 on attendance at weddings and receptions and a ban on indoor sports involving more than six people, such as five-a-side football. Customers in hospitality venues will be required to cover their faces except while seated to eat or drink.
Office workers are to be advised to work from home if it is possible, while those in sectors where this is not possible – such as health, education, construction and essential public services – will be encouraged to keep going to their workplaces.
New laws will make it a legal obligation for operators of hospitality and retail premises to ensure that customers comply with the rules. And fines for breaching the ‘rule of six’ limit on the size of social gatherings or failing to wear a face-mask will be doubled from £100 to £200.
Mr Johnson said the government will provide police and local authorities with the extra funds needed to ensure a greater police presence on our streets, with the option to call in troops to assist if police are overstretched.
The new rules announced by the PM in a sombre statement to the House of Commons apply to England only, but Mr Johnson said that after discussions with the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the government’s Cobra emergency committee, he expected them to take similar steps.
Mr Johnson said that the UK stood at a “perilous turning point”, after scientific and medical experts advised that daily infections could hit 50,000 by mid-October if action was not taken to damp down the disease.
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But he insisted that the restrictions announced today were “by no means a return to the full lockdown” seen in the spring.
Declaring that “this is the moment when we must act”, Mr Johnson said he was taking steps calculated to reduce the spread of coronavirus – known as R and currently well above the crucial level of one at which the disease can grow exponentially – while avoiding the need to shut down schools or impose blanket controls on the wider economy.
In a gloomy message which threatens to dash families’ hopes of a normal Christmas, the prime minister said: “Unless we palpably make progress then we should assume that the restrictions I have announced will remain in place for perhaps six months.”
Mr Johnson told MPs that the number of Britons testing positive for coronavirus had quadrupled over the past month.
The government must “act now to avoid still graver consequences later on”, he said.
Boris Johnson lists new coronavirus restrictions
New restrictions were “carefully judged to achieve the maximum reduction in the R number with the minimum damage to lives and livelihoods”, he said.
He told MPs: “I want to stress that this is by no means a return to the full lockdown of March. We’re not issuing a general instruction to stay at home. “We will ensure that schools, colleges, universities stay open because nothing is more important than the education, health and well-being of our young people. “We will ensure businesses can stay open in a Covid-compliant way. However we must take action to suppress the disease.”
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