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The pressure on Boris Johnson’s government to rethink a relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions over the Christmas period grew on Tuesday when two leading health journals published a rare joint article warning it was about to “blunder into another major error that will cost many lives”.
The concerted message from the BMJ and the Health Service Journal – only the second in their century-old histories – came a few hours before it emerged that cabinet office minister Michael Gove would be holding a call with the UK’s devolved administrations on whether it was now necessary to introduce tougher measures.
Amid growing alarm over the consequences for the National Health Service of a big surge in cases at a time of year when the health service is under greatest strain from winter ailments, Keir Starmer, Labour leader, has also called on the prime minister to review the planned festive easing. The government had “lost control of infections, putting our economy and our NHS at grave risk in the new year”, Sir Keir added.
The journals’ intervention follows criticism from London mayor Sadiq Khan who, on Tuesday, urged the government to “look over their rules” for the festive season. He told Sky News: “What I’d say to the government is, I’m not sure you’ve got it right, in fact I’m sure you haven’t got it right in relation to the relaxations over Christmas.”
NHS burden
Writing ahead of a ministerial meeting on Wednesday to review the tiered restrictions for England, the journals said that when the government had devised the plans to soften curbs over Christmas it had assumed the Covid-19 demand on the NHS would be decreasing.
“But it is not, it is rising, and the emergence of a new strain of the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy,” they added.
Nicola Sturgeon said on Tuesday that her Scottish government was considering whether “additional precautions” would be necessary over Christmas because of rising coronavirus cases and concerns about a fast-spreading new variant of Sars-Cov-2 virus.
“I will discuss all of this later this afternoon along with the other UK governments in a four-nations call that we requested yesterday,” the first minister told the Scottish parliament.
Hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19 have risen in recent weeks. The journals said the government had been too slow to introduce curbs in the spring and again in the autumn.
Third wave looms
“It should now reverse its rash decision to allow household mixing and instead extend the tiers over the five-day Christmas period in order to bring numbers down in the advance of a likely third wave,” said BMJ editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee and HSJ editor Alastair McLellan.
They also urged ministers to review and strengthen the tier structure, which they said had failed to suppress rates of infection and hospitalisation.
Unless action was taken to change the trajectory, hospitals in England were likely to have just short of 19,000 Covid patients on New Year’s Eve – almost exactly the same as the 18,974 peak of the first wave on April 12th.
In a letter to the prime minister, Sir Keir said it had become increasingly clear over recent days that the tier system introduced two weeks ago had failed to control transmission of Covid-19. “Sadly, it does now appear that the government has – once again – lost control of infections, putting our economy and our NHS at grave risk in the new year,” he added.
Sir Keir said: “If you conclude with government scientists that we need to take tougher action to keep people safe over Christmas, then you will have my support.”
The prime minister’s spokesperson said on Tuesday that the government still intended to relax Covid-19 measures from December 23rd but stressed that the guidance was being kept “under constant review”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020