Downing Street has repeated that there is “no plan to move to plan B”, insisting that its proposed measures – which include mandatory face masks, home-working guidance and vaccine passports – are not needed to drive down the current rise in coronavirus infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
Hours earlier, Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), had warned the current infection rate in the UK was “unacceptable” and “astonishingly high” compared to “most other west European countries”.
Nearly 37,000 new cases and 38 deaths were reported in the UK on Monday, with these figures excluding Wales due to a “technical issue”.
Meanwhile, as soaring infections breed concerns of another disrupted festive season, Sajid Javid suggested that Christmas will be “normal” this year if people continue to come forward for vaccines and make use of regular testing.
“For all those people like me that are hoping and planning for a normal Christmas – which I do by the way, I think that’s where we’ll be, we’ll have a normal Christmas – if we want let’s just keep playing our part,” the health secretary told BBC Breakfast.
Mr Javid also said that exclusion zones outside schools were an option to prevent “idiot” anti-vaccination protesters spreading “vicious lies” to children, after the Association of School and College Leaders said that 79 per cent of schools it surveyed had been targeted by anti-vaxxers.
