British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced pub and bar closures as well as bans on household mixing Monday under a new system for local coronavirus restrictions.
Johnson unveiled the new “local COVID alert levels,” which divides the United Kingdom into areas with one of three threat categories — medium, high, and very high — depending on rates of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, according to the Guardian.
“We want to create the maximum possible local consensus behind this more severe local action. So in each area, we will work with local government leaders on the additional measures which should be taken,” Johnson said Monday. “This could lead to further restrictions on the hospitality, leisure, entertainment, or personal care sectors.”
Johnson added that retail, schools, and universities will remain open.
Most of the U.K. will fall under the “medium” alert level, which consists of existing coronavirus restrictions such as maximum capacity gatherings at six people and mandatory hospitality closures at 10 p.m. The “high” and “very high” levels will apply to specific areas of the country experiencing higher levels of infection. The goal of limiting household mixing, closing pubs, and keeping gatherings both indoors and outdoors small is to keep the country’s hospital system from becoming overburdened.
“I know how difficult this is. They like, like everyone in the house, us, are grappling with very real dilemmas. But we cannot let the [National Health Service] fall over when lives are at stake,” Johnson told Parliament.
Johnson’s opponents accused him of losing control of the pandemic and scrambling to contain outbreaks. Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, said he is “deeply skeptical that the government has actually got a plan to get control of this virus, to protect jobs, or retain public trust.”
The British government has updated its coronavirus dashboard, recording 13,972 new COVID-19 cases, 1,100 more cases than Sunday. The figure at this time last week was 12,594. The total number of infections has surpassed 603,000.
