Latest updates: government adviser says allowing families to mix at Christmas would pose ‘substantial risks’
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Diane Abbott, who was shadow home secretary when Jeremy Corbyn was leader and how is one of his closest political allies, claims that Sir Keir Starmer would have never won the Labour leadership if members had known how he would treat his predecessor.
Excluding @jeremycorbyn as a Labour MP is wrong. Does @Keir_Starmer REALLY think that @UKLabour members would have voted for him as leader if they knew that within months he would do this? No way to unite the party #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn pic.twitter.com/rBDkS7baPF
A scientist who advises the government as a member of Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, has said that trying to allow people to have a near-normal Christmas risks “throwing fuel on the fire” of the Covid pandemic.
Prof Andrew Hayward, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London (UCL), made the comment in an interview on the Today programme when he said that allowing families to mix at Christmas would post “substantial risks”. Speaking in a personal capacity, Hayward said:
Mixing at Christmas does pose substantial risks, particularly in terms of bringing together generations with high incidence of infection with the older generations who currently have much lower levels of infection and are at most risk of dying if they catch Covid.
My personal view is we’re putting far too much emphasis on having a near-normal Christmas.
Well exactly. We’re on the cusp of being able to protect those elderly people who we love through vaccination and it would be tragic to throw that opportunity away and waste the gains we’ve made during lockdown by trying to return to normality over the holidays.
When policies are undulating between stay at home to save lives, eat out to help out, the tier system, second lockdown and proposals for an amnesty on social distancing, it’s a highly inconsistent message.
Whereas in fact the things that people need to do to stay safe and to keep their loved ones safe are relatively simple. Avoid, as far as possible, indoor close contact with people outside of your household, avoid crowded places and protect the most vulnerable by not putting them at unnecessary risk.
Approaching 1 is not good enough – that still means the infection is increasing. It needs to be clearly below 1 and it needs to get to low levels, rather than the high levels that we still have.
