London saw wild scenes of a massive weekend exodus before the start of a Christmas blockade and the travel ban caused by a new, more contagious mutation of COVID-19.
Within hours of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on Saturday of a new top-level closure for the capital and surrounding areas (many detractors said they did indeed “cancel Christmas”), thousands of people went out on the roads and obstructed the train stations.
Witnesses told The Sun that it was leaving London as a “war zone”, while journalist Harriet Clugston compared her viral video of people crammed into St. John’s station. Pancras from London with those who fled Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.
“The last train out of Saigon,” Clugston wrote next to his video it was seen more than 3.1 million times on Sunday morning, and was defined as “maximum guaranteed damage.”
“As expected, the train is full … Everyone, of course, has suitcases,” he said from the train where there were announcements that social distancing “will not be possible” due to the number of people there was on board.
He admitted that, like everyone else on the train, he had “made what is probably a very silly and irresponsible decision to travel.”
But the last-minute announcement of the blockade created “a very predictable stampede of people rushing out before the midnight deadline,” he wrote.
“It is what created a multitude of people that increases the risk of virus transmission on the train.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday kicked off the “clearly totally irresponsible behavior” of the masses rushing to travel before the start of midnight closure.
“People should unpack if they have them,” he told Sky News.
Hancock insisted the government had been forced to act “quickly and decisively” because the new mutation in the coronavirus “was out of control.”
The strain, which accounts for more than 60 percent of new infections recorded in London, appears to be more communicable than previous variants, so it’s “more important than ever” to control it, Hancock said.
“This is a deadly disease, we need to control it and this new variant has become more difficult,” he told Sky.