Two leading health Journals have urged the Government to rethink its plans for mixing over Christmas
Both the British Medical Journal and Health Service Journal warned that “many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop their guard,” as they called on the Government to “reverse its rash decision to allow household mixing”.
It added that it believed the government was about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives.”
“England went into lockdown on 5 November, and the number of inpatients with covid-19 began to fall, down to 12 968 on 5 December.1 If this rate of decline had continued, the English NHS would have been on course for just under 11 000 covid-19 inpatients on 31 December. However, in the past two weeks, despite most of the country being in tiers 2 or 3 of restrictive measures, numbers of inpatients have started to rise again. By 14 December (the latest data available) the covid bed occupancy had climbed back to 15 053. Unless something happens to change this trajectory, hospitals in England will have just short of 19 000 patients with covid on New Year’s Eve. This figure, derived by extrapolating a straight line from 5 December to 14 December through to 31 December, would be almost exactly the same as the 18 974 peak of the first wave on 12 April.”
The Government should review his plan to relax coronavirus regulations over the Christmas period, the Labour Party said .
“It is my view that you should now convene COBRA (emergency response committee) in the next 24 hours to review whether the current relaxation is appropriate given the rising number of cases, said Sir Kier Starmer
Earlier Cabinet member Stephen Barclay doing the media rounds Steve Barclay urged people to do the “minimum possible” mixing over Christmas – marking a shift in tone on official messaging – and confirmed that the festive window remains “under review”.
The chief secretary to the Treasury told Sky News: “There is a balance to be struck that many families have not seen each other all year. It is important for people’s wellbeing, for their mental health. We don’t want to criminalise people for coming together as family over Christmas.
The Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said there was a “review point on Wednesday” that could see some pre-Christmas changes.
“We have made it clear we will make sure we have got a very tight grip on the virus going into Christmas,” he added. “But I do think it is important for people to be able to have over that five-day period the opportunity to spend time with loved ones and we have built in slack around Christmas to wider approach.”
