The leader of Bolton Council has warned that there could be “unrest” in Bolton if the government enforces local lockdowns to contain the Indian variant.
Conservative David Greenhalgh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ve been there before and they don’t work – not in a dense conurbation like Greater Manchester.
“This happened before, the spread increased because people travelled 50 yards across the county boundary to access hospitality that they can’t in their own area.”
Asked if he had told Mr Hancock there would be civil unrest, he said: “I do think there is a danger of unrest.
“There is a great deal of resentment. Bolton was… we were disproportionately affected really since July last year.”
He added: “But this would be a very, very difficult situation to manage I believe – if we went into a lockdown that we have personal experience of as a town, which did not work.”
According to the Manchester Evening News last night, theinfection rate in Bolton has climbed to more than 300 per 100,000, the latest data shows.The latest Public Health England figures show the transmission rate in the borough now stands at 301.5 which is more than 14 times the national average for England of 21 per 100,000.
Greenhalgh told the same programme:
“We are putting all the measures in that we can at the moment. We have community spread, there’s no doubt about that, and we’re holding back a variant that would appear – although the evidence is still being gathered – to be a little bit more transmissible, easily transmissible.
“The majority of our cases are in very much our younger age groups – primary school, secondary school and in their 20s.
“We still haven’t got an increase in hospitalisation and severe illness, which is hugely welcome, those figures still remain low. We’re doing everything we can, the Government has sent in surge vaccinations, surge testing … We’re doing everything we can, but I think the next two weeks we will still see our cases rising.”
