England’s 21 June lockdown has been largely extended by four weeks until 19 July, Boris Johnson has announced.
He said that the four tests to move to the next stage of reopening had not been met.
There will however will be a review after two weeks to see if a full reopening might be justified then
The Prime Minister told this evening’s Press Conference that the re-opening has brought more infections and hospitalisations and every day that goes by we are better by the vaccines.
“But there are still millions of younger adults that haven’t been vaccinated. That is why we are so concerned about the Delta variant”
The Government aims to get all over 40s double vaccinated by that point, and all other adults to have had their first vaccine dose.
The Prime Minister said that he is confident that this will be the last delay to restriction lifting and described July 19th as the terminus date
There was some good news as weddings and wakes will have their limits lifted if social distancing is in place.
In Care homes the requirements to quarantine for 14 days after a visit to be removed in most cases
23 and 24 year olds will be able to book their NHS vaccine appointments from tomorrow it was also announced
England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said the country would be cracking on and lifting restrictions on time if it was not for the Indian variant
He added that the link between getting an infection and being hospitalised has been ‘substantially weakened’ but it has not been completely stopped.
Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance added that the delay will give “double protection” by double jabbing 40-somethings and halting the spread in young through single jabs to all over 18s
He also said that the delay will reduce the peak of infections by 30-50 per cent and will end when the natural circuit break of the school summer holidays begins
