Londoners piled on trains and motorways on Saturday night as they rushed to leave the capital ahead of new restrictions announced by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Johnson announced that London and large parts of the south-east of England will introduce level 4 Covid-19 restrictions on Sunday.
Level 4 is the highest possible restriction level in England, effectively renewing the blockade seen in the spring.
On Saturday evening, at seven in the afternoon, there were no free seats on trains leaving London from various stations in the capital, according to the PA news agency. Passengers complained of not being able to distance themselves socially inside the train carriages.
The scenes were condemned by politicians and public health experts. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, called the introduction of the restrictions “devastating” in an interview with the BBC, adding that the scenes at London’s train stations “were a direct consequence of the chaotic way in which what the announcement was made of and its final stage.
I understand why people want to see their mothers, fathers, relationships with older people again, but I think it’s wrong, ”he said.
In direct statements to Londoners who left London, he said that while they may not have broken the rules, they may have removed the virus from London and put at risk “your mother, your father, relationships with the elderly “.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the board of the British Medical Association (BMA), said these scenes would not have been seen “in East Asian countries that have managed pandemics well in the past”, and added that the government should ensure that there is a control of multitude of measures.
“While Christmas will obviously be ruined for many, the worst we can do is infect our loved ones,” he told Sky News.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the government’s actions on Sky, saying they had no choice but to act after new scientific evidence was presented that a new strain of the virus was spreading faster than others in the United Kingdom.
“It was our duty to act,” he said. “We acted very quickly and decisively with the announcements the prime minister put out yesterday.”
New strain: The chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, warned on Saturday that a newly identified variant of Covid-19 “can spread more rapidly” than previous strains of the virus.
“It’s spreading very fast now,” Johnson warned. “It’s with a very heavy heart that I say we can’t continue with Christmas as planned.”
As with other variants or new strains of Covid-19, this one has a genetic footprint that makes it easy to track, and is now common. This does not mean that the mutation has made it spread more easily, nor does it necessarily mean that this variation is more dangerous.
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