A mutant virus cannot wholly explain why the UK is in this mess or distract from the other failures that have led us here
The lockdown in the south-east of England may be the shape of things to come. Sixteen million people are under new severe tier 4 restrictions and there are suggestions that these tougher new rules could be in place for months. Many more across the country have seen their plans torn up at the 11th hour. The reason for the government’s change of plan is a new strain of the virus, dubbed B117, that appears no more lethal than the original Sars-CoV-2 but is much more transmissible. European nations have banned flights from the UK, fearful that a mutant pathogen, homegrown in Kent, will spread across our borders and seas. If the new virus’s effect on the rate of transmission is as bad as government advisers’ fear then we will need a national shutdown of the kind imposed in March.
The prime minister should have acted sooner. He may not have known exactly what was driving the growth in Covid cases but ministers have been aware for a week that something was going wrong. On Tuesday, the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal warned that if current trends continued, even without the planned Christmas relaxation, there were likely to be 19,000 Covid patients in English hospitals by New Year’s Eve – the same as at the peak of the first wave in April.
