Downing Street has not ruled out using local lockdowns and return to the tiers system as a way of controlling local Covid outbreaks

As the country moved to step 4 of lockdown easing, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson said at the daily briefing whether ministers would consider a return to the tiered rules for hotspots:

“I don’t want to get ahead of where we are at the moment and start getting into hypothetical situations.

“As the Prime Minister has set out, we’ve moved as a country into step three, albeit with a very targeted increase in surge vaccinations and testing in these areas where we’re seeing rises and that’s what we want to proceed with if at all possible but we don’t want to rule anything out.
“And I think until we have more data and more evidence, we won’t be making those judgments.”

Asked if he agreed with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng that there was nothing to suggest the June 21 lifting would be delayed.

He replied: “The PM set out the position last week, you know we are proceeding cautiously, we will keep a close eye on the data and as the Business Secretary made clear this morning currently there’s nothing in the data to suggest we can’t proceed.

“But obviously we are keeping a very watchful eye on the outbreaks of the variant first identified in India, and particularly what impact it has on hospitalisation rates, and things like that.”

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