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 Finance minister Rishi Sunak announced a new package of business
grants worth 4.6 billion pounds ($6.2 billion) to help keep people
in jobs and firms afloat until measures are relaxed gradually, at
the earliest from mid-February but likely later.
Britain has been among the countries worst-hit by COVID-19, with the
second highest death toll in Europe and an economy that suffered the
sharpest contraction of any in the Group of Seven during the first
wave of infections last spring.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the new lockdown late on
Monday, saying the highly contagious new coronavirus variant first
identified in Britain was spreading so fast the National Health
Service (NHS) risked being overwhelmed within 21 days.
In England alone, some 27,000 people are in hospital with COVID, 40%
more than during the first peak in April, with infection numbers
still expected to rise further after increased socialising during
the Christmas period.
A Savanta-ComRes poll taken just after Johnson's address suggested
four in five adults in England supported the lockdown.
"I definitely think it was the right decision to make. The NHS
hospitals are really full so we're in a similar position as we were
in lockdown number one," said Londoner Kaitlin Colucci, 28.
"I just hope that everyone doesn't struggle too much with having to
be indoors again."
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 75,000 people have died
in the United Kingdom within 28 days of testing positive for
coronavirus, according to official figures.
Under the new rules in England, schools are closed to most pupils,
people should work from home if possible, and all hospitality and
non-essential shops are closed.
The semi-autonomous executives in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland have imposed similar measures.
As infection rates soar across Europe, other countries are also
clamping down on public life. Germany is set to extend its strict
lockdown until the end of the month, and Italy decided on Tuesday to
keep nationwide restrictions in place this weekend while relaxing
curbs on weekdays.
[to top of second column] |
 VACCINATIONS ARE KEY
Sunak's latest package of grants adds to the
eye-watering 280 billion pounds in government
support already announced for this financial
year to stave off total economic collapse.
"This will help businesses to get through the
months ahead – and crucially it will help
sustain jobs, so workers can be ready to return
when they are able to reopen," he said in a
statement.
The new lockdown is likely to cause the economy
to shrink again, though not by as much as the
huge shock caused by the first one in spring
2020.
JP Morgan economist Allan Monks said he was now
expecting the economy to shrink by 2.5% in the
first quarter of 2021 -- compared with almost
20% in the April-June period of last year.
More than a million people in Britain have already received their
first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The government aims to vaccinate all elderly care home residents and
their carers, everyone over the age of 70, all frontline health and
social care workers, and everyone who is clinically extremely
vulnerable, by mid-February.
But senior minister Michael Gove urged caution in terms of when that
might translate into an easing of restrictions.
"We'll be able to review the progress that we've made on the 15th of
February ... and we hope that we'll be able to progressively lift
restrictions after that, but what I can't do is predict, nobody can
predict with accuracy what we will be able to relax and when," he
said on Sky News.
Gove also said the government would soon announce new measures aimed
at international travellers.
($1 = 0.7371 pounds)
(Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Michael Holden, Andy Bruce,
William Schomberg and Ben Makori; writing by Estelle Shirbon;
editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Raissa Kasolowsky)
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