Boris Johnson Urges Public To Show 'Discipline And Resolve' To Avoid Second National Lockdown
Boris Johnson has told the public “we will get through this winter together” as he urged people to summon “the discipline and the resolve” to stick to new Covid-19 restrictions.
In a TV address to the nation from Downing Street, the prime minister warned of “unquestionably difficult months to come” and said the UK could still be “forced into a new national lockdown”.
Signalling new restrictions, which include working from home where possible and a curfew for hospitality venues, could be in place for six months, he recalled a “spirit of togetherness” when the virus first swept the UK in March.
He then called for Brits to “protect each other” as he outlined the devastating consequences a second shutdown would have on the nation’s economy and health.
It was not “realistic” to effectively “lock up” the elderly vulnerable, he said, while allowing the virus to spread elsewhere, adding: “The tragic reality of having Covid is that your mild cough can be someone else’s death knell.”
He then said: “Never in our history has our collective destiny and our collective health depended so completely on our individual behaviour.”
His message to the nation follows the government’s chief scientific and medical advisers warning there could be 50,000 UK cases a day by mid-October with a daily death toll of 200 or more by mid-November if the current growth in the rate of infection is not halted.
An update on coronavirus. https://t.co/3uCUJ5grBm
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 22, 2020
The PM went on: “If we let this virus get out of control now, it would mean that our NHS had no space – once again – to deal with cancer patients and millions of other non-Covid medical needs.
“And if we were forced into a new national lockdown, that would threaten not just jobs and livelihoods but the loving human contact on which we all depend.
“It would mean renewed loneliness and confinement for the elderly and vulnerable, and...
