Millions more people will be plunged into England’s toughest Tier 4 coronavirus restrictions from December 26 in a bid to stem the rising number of infections, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday.
The new measures will apply to Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, some areas of Essex and the borough of Waverley in Surrey.
At least 18 million people in England are now living under the Tier 4 rules, which ban people from leaving their homes without a “reasonable excuse” and mean they cannot meet other people indoors, including over the Christmas and New Year period.
Tier 4 measures were already imposed on swathes of southern and eastern England, including London last week, as scientists discovered a new strain of coronavirus had been spreading throughout the region.
Speaking at a news conference, Hancock said other areas of the UK will also be escalated into Tier 3, which forces restaurants, cafes and bars to close and bans people from meeting indoors with anyone outside their own household.
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A new, potentially more infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has been found in Britain in cases linked to South Africa, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday.
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"Thanks to the impressive genomic capability of the South Africans, we've detected two cases of another new variant of coronavirus here in the UK," Hancock told a media briefing.
"Both are contacts of cases who have travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks."