Boris Johnson questioned on his winter Covid plan

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Cases and deaths of COVID-19 have resurged in recent weeks, leading experts to urge the Government to act fast ahead of winter to prevent yet another lockdown. Boris Johnson will not rule out reinstating some restrictions if hospitalisations and deaths from coronavirus increase over the coming months, potentially plunging the UK back into the harsh restrictions of last winter.

What does the Government say?

Mr Johnson has imposed three lockdowns so far in England, with the devolved nations following similar routes to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

The Prime Minister is expected to announce later today that lockdowns will be kept in reserve, used only as a last resort if cases of coronavirus skyrocket.

Other steps, including booster jabs for the over 50s and vaccinations for 12-15-year-olds, will be used to keep the virus at bay.

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Other measures, such as bringing back compulsory face masks in public venues and working from home orders could also be used.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said: “Lockdowns will be an absolutely last resort.

“As we embark on the winter months, the virus has an in-built advantage whether it be flu or Covid.

“It would be foolhardy to suggest this thing has already transitioned from pandemic to endemic, so we have to have contingency planning.”

What do the scientists say?

On Monday morning Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling was a key cause of the UK going into lockdown in March 2020, was asked whether he could confirm the UK’s lockdown days were over.

He said he hoped so but added: “You can’t rule out anything completely.”

Other experts have also warned that despite Mr Johnson’s pledges, another lockdown can’t be ruled out if coronavirus figures continue at the same rate they are now.

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Professor Ravi Gupta said: “We can see from the figures that we’re still nearing a thousand deaths a week and thousands of hospitalised patients that are challenging capacity in our hospitals – and of course making care for non-Covid patients extremely difficult as well because of the stretch of the staff that are in those hospitals who have been under pressure for 18 months now.

“So it’s pretty clear I think, from the data and from individual sources, that we’re not out of the woods and it doesn’t bode well for going into winter at all.”

He added: “If we cast our minds back to July 19, many scientists including myself, were saying that ‘we need to take this slowly because we have the transmission rates are far too high to be removing all restrictions, and this will have a knock-on effect.

“In other words we wouldn’t get away with this as a country moving into winter’.

“And what we’re seeing now is really the result of that advice not being heeded and now we’re in a position where we’re talking about lockdowns again.

“So I think that with the correct planning, this could have been avoided.”

Calum Semple, Sage member and professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, has warned there is more than just coronavirus on the cards this winter that could lead to added restrictions.

He said: “Now that we’re opening up society, we’ve got to… live with not just Covid but the flu will come back, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) bronchiolitis will come back, so I think we’re going to have a bit of a rough winter.”

He added: “I can predict that the NHS is going to have a really tough time and it wouldn’t surprise me if local directors of public health may be suggesting use of face masks in shops and on public transport.”

He also said the forthcoming COVID-19 booster jab campaign will “make a difference for a few people that are frail and elderly and have high risks, where their immunity might just need a bit of boosting, and it’s to try and give them an extra leg up to protect them”.

Public health expert Professor Devi Sridhar, from the University of Edinburgh, has advised the next step should be vaccinating children as young as five against coronavirus.

She said: “It looks like Pfizer is going for approval of the vaccine for five to 11-year-olds in the United States in October so this is going to be the next issue on the horizon – once we deal with the 12 to 17-year-olds whether we do that for the under-12s.”

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