Britain needs to impose a three-week period of national lockdown restrictions immediately to stop cases of COVID-19 spiralling, government scientific adviser Jeremy Farrar said, adding that current regional measures would not be effective.
Farrar, who is director of the Wellcome Trust and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said the response needed to be immediate because putting it off would only worsen and lengthen the crisis, telling Sky News that the best time to have locked down was two to three weeks ago, but it wasn’t too late now.
Senior minister Michael Gove, however, said a two- or three- week national lockdown - named a “circuit breaker” by some - was not being considered. “The spread and the nature of the disease does not merit that approach at the moment,” he told Sky News on Sunday.