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Public Health England’s London director has today (Wednesday September 16) warned of the possibility of curfews imposed in London in order to halt a second wave of coronavirus in the capital.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, the Professor Kevin Fenton told of how curfews could be a next step in order to avoid a full London lockdown. He also called on Londoners to ‘pull together’ to limit the rise in cases that’s currently feared.
Professor Fenton said that about ten London boroughs have reported around 30 cases per 100,000 population over a seven-day rolling average, with an increased transmission rate among 17-29-year-olds. He also highlighted that around 500,000 students are arriving in the capital this month from around the world, which would likely cause a rise in infections.
‘We will work with our London partners to identify what’s the best approach, and some of that might be intensifying activity at borough and sub-regional levels, and for a few things it may require a pan-London approach, just because of how feasible it is to implement some of those interventions,’ said Fenton of the potential scale of curfew measures.
In its local lockdown, Bolton has seen a 10pm curfew placed on hospitality venues, and government sources have suggested that a UK-wide curfew could be put into place to avoid a second wave.
In more positive news, Fenton said the tube was ‘safe’ thanks to extensive cleaning and people complying with the current rules around face-mask use. He also praised the capital’s ‘phenomenal’ efforts earlier this year in response to the virus. ‘As we see the resurgence occurring in different parts of the country, we need to call on that resolve [...] say actually we did this before and we can do it again,’ he said.
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