With more than 1,000 deaths from Covid every day for weeks, talk of looser restrictions is reckless. The prime minister should ignore his backbenchers
The coronavirus situation in the UK could hardly be more serious, with more than 1,000 deaths a day every day since 9 January. Hospitals are at breaking point, as the eruption of a row over medical staff criticising the public for rule-breaking showed. Energy must be focused on driving infections down, and vaccinations up, particularly in view of warnings about the new variants.
Against this backdrop, a series of statements from Conservative politicians demanding that the government should announce when schools will reopen seems reckless politicking. The risk is that the public will be misled into thinking that the worst is over. Teachers and other school staff are already under huge pressure, as the prime minister acknowledged on Monday. When there is no timetable for vaccinating them or a solution to the problem of high rates of infection among children, why would one endanger frontline workers or the communities they serve?
