Coronavirus: UK warned – prepare for six months of lockdown

Britons have been told that a semblance of normality probably won’t return before August.

Police officers and National Rail staff patrol an empty Waterloo Station. Picture: Getty Images.

Britons have been told they face as long as six months of “measures of lockdown’’ to combat the coronavirus, as Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced an extraordinary package of benefits to help the self employed who have found their businesses collapse amidst the crisis.

Deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries indicated that the coronavirus impact will be felt for much of the year, but she was hopeful that a semblance of normality would be felt around the end of the usual summer break at the end of August. The news was disheartening for the elderly and vulnerable, who have been ordered to self-quarantine for 12 weeks, as well as the rest of the nation who are restricted to essential movements only.

“The whole country wants to be back to normal as soon as can, six months is a general look forward about this sort of pandemic,’’ Ms Harries said.

“Potentially we may see measures of lockdown going forward over the next six months, that is not an implausible outcome.’’

She said the government would flex interventions “at the right time and in the right place’’.

Apart from trying to manage the inflow of seriously ill patients into the National Health Service, the government has also tried “to put an arm around workers,’’ and in addition to earlier support packages for the employed and small business, the Chancellor has extended aid to the self employed. Those with an income of £50,000 ($100,000) or less can qualify for a taxable grant worth 80% of their average income over the last three years, up to £2,500 per month, for at least three months.

But Mr Sunak hinted that after the coronavirus crisis, the self employed may have to pay higher national insurance costs in line with the current rates paid by those who are employed.

The announcement came on the day when deaths attributed to coronavirus in the UK hit 578, a rise of around 100. But the NHS is changing the cut-off times for announcing deaths and so this figure included some from the previous day.

So far it appears the UK has avoided the mass spike of cases being seen in Italy and Spain, largely attributed to the British government’s “’shielding of elderly and vulnerable persons’’ while Londoners, in the whole being younger and healthier than other parts of the nation, may be absorbing the virus impact without too many health concerns. There are 11,658 infections across the nation, serious enough to be hospitalised.

One university study using people logging medical data onto an app, indicated that ten per cent of the first 65p0,000 people supplying their symptoms may have had coronavirus.

In the past 24 hours Italy has seen another 662 people die, taking the death toll to 8,165 but the exponential curve of increase appears to be flattening out.

In Spain, where the virus has quickly taken hold north of Madrid in the Catalonia region, there were 495 deaths in one day, with total deaths of 4,145.