3-tier lockdown aims to get COVID-19 under control by Christmas

Oliver Dowden has said that the 3-tier system could help to control “rapidly rising cases” in parts of the country

The aim of the government’s new 3-tier COVID-19 national lockdown system is to get the coronavirus under control by the beginning of next year and hopefully in time for Christmas, a minister has told the press.

Speaking to Sky News, Oliver Dowden, the UK’s Culture Secretary said: “The purpose of doing this is to ensure that we get the virus under control so that by the time we get through to after Christmas we are in that position where it’s under control.”

“Indeed I hope it will be sooner than that.”

This comes after over 1,000 students at Newcastle University have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week. Twelve members of staff among the university’s 6,500 employees have also had a positive test result for the coronavirus.

Mr Dowden said the government had to act to control “rapidly rising cases” of COVID-19 in parts of the country.

he said:

“The point of moving to this tiered system is so that in those most highly affected areas, we’ve got measures in place to control the virus,”

“If those measures are successful, we hope to be able to take areas out of those higher levels of restrictions.”

“This nonsense about we’ve talked with local government leaders and they’ve agreed with us a process, is just blatantly a lie,” he told Kay Burley.

“They’ve made their mind up, they’ve told us what they’re going to do.”
Mr Anderson added: “Why are we having this blanket approach? It’s going to damage our economy.”

Joe Anderson, the Mayor of Liverpool has said that the UK government had decided on the closures without first consulting local leaders.

“This nonsense about we’ve talked with local government leaders and they’ve agreed with us a process, is just blatantly a lie,” he told Kay Burley.

“They’ve made their mind up, they’ve told us what they’re going to do.”
Mr Anderson added: “Why are we having this blanket approach? It’s going to damage our economy.”

This comes after Boris Johnson is expected to bring in tough new COVID-19 restrictions next week for pubs within northern England, which could include shutting them down altogether in the cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

Members of the UK’s hospitality sector have started legal actions in order to challenge the “catastrophic” restrictions in the country.

The night-time economy adviser for Greater Manchester, Sacha Lord, said that local leaders had not yet been presented with “any tangible scientific evidence to merit a full closure” of the hospitality industry in the area.

The culture secretary has said that ministers have “robust evidence for doing this”, adding that: “The evidence shows that there is a higher risk of transmissions in hospitality settings. There is academic evidence from the United States.”

MP for Manchester Central, Labour’s Lucy Powell, disputed this, saying that: “Government and scientists still haven’t produced this evidence.”

“The big problem for them is local leaders have all the same data (in fact better data for their areas) and they know hospitality settings make up a very small proportion of infection transmission.”