The UK has announced 2,919 more coronavirus cases 14 deaths as England braces for tougher lockdown rules from Monday amid rising cases in young people.
Fatalities are no longer a big measure of the progress of the outbreak and the attention of politicians and the public has turned to new infections.
These have been rising in recent days to such an extent that Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday announced people should start to ‘limit social contact’ again from Monday.
He confirmed new laws in England will allow police to issue £100 fines to people meeting in groups larger than six as he attempts to cut down on young people gathering.
The new rule, which toughens up the previous one that allowed up to 30 people to gather if from two households, will be applied across the country.
Senior MPs said today that the ‘broad brush’ approach to tightening the screw across England will mean millions living in almost Covid-free areas must pay the price for some inner cities’ inability to keep a lid on infections.
No more deaths were reported by the health agencies in Wales or Scotland today.
Northern Ireland reported one across all settings while NHS England reported seven in hospitals alone.
The Government’s ‘official’ death toll is several higher than those reported by each nation because it takes into consideration deaths across all settings – hospitals, care homes and own homes – in each nation, and uses different time cut-off points.
The seven-day rolling average of cases is now 2,193. For comparison, at its lowest, it was 546 on July 8 and highest at 5,195 on April 14.
The Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday held a now-rare televised press conference and confirmed the new ‘rule of six’ law that means people will face legal consequences if they gather in groups larger than six.
This rule will apply to any groups of that size meeting anywhere in England, even if outdoors or at a pub.
But the rules, brought in to try and stem a tide of surging infections among young people, will unfairly apply to everyone in the country.
While some areas are seeing seriously concerning spikes in cases of Covid-19 – there are around 30 locations on Public Health England’s watchlist – hundreds of local councils have successfully avoided the coronavirus danger.
But at least 38million people in these relatively unaffected areas will still be forced under tighter restrictions.
One Conservative MP said it was unfair to take such a ‘broad brush’ approach that pulled together people in at-risk inner city areas with those living in the spaced-out countryside.
Local authority data reveals that 65 per cent (210 out of 320) of councils have a rate of coronavirus cases below 20 per 100,000, the level at which the Government considers quarantine measures for foreign countries.
And an analysis of postcode data by The Telegraph shows 75 per cent – or 5,157 areas – have a rate below 20 per 100,000. Around 7,200 people are estimated to live in each postcode, which when multiplied gives 38million.
The UK’s coronavirus outbreak is mostly being driven by cases in hotspots including Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Birmingham and Leicester, with many areas in local lockdown measures or receiving extra Government support.
Rural areas in the South West, for example, have escaped the worst of the virus’s impact for most of the outbreak but are still being subjected to the tough rules faced by the rest of the country.
Lesser-affected areas include places such as Northumberland and Bishop Auckland in the North, to Weymouth, Ashford and Winchester in the south.
Although cases have risen, the positive test rate – how many people test positive out of all those tested – has not reached levels seen during the pandemic. This gives an indication that some cases are due to more focused testing in hotspots, but not all, given that the positivity rate is starting to creep up
All will be required to ensure people meet in groups no larger than six indoors and outdoors, and subject to fines ranging from £100 to £3,200 if they fail to comply, despite their low numbers of coronavirus cases.
A Conservative former Minister criticised the measures as a ‘very broad brush’ and said that something ‘more concentrated’ would have been better.
David Jones MP told MailOnline: ‘I can understand that the Government has to do something, because there is certainly an uptick.
‘But it is not an uptick across the country as a whole. There are some parts of the country such as Devon, Dorset where there is very little virus activity at all.
‘So it does seem to be very broad brush… I would have thought something more concentrated would be better.’
He added that while crowded pubs had been ‘asking for trouble’ it was ‘not something that appears to be uniform across the country’. ‘Something more focused would be appropriate,’ he said.
Christopher Snowdon, the Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute for Economic Affairs, said the Government had ‘over-reacted’ to a rise in cases by bringing in the draconian measures.
‘Figures show that the (coronavirus) problem is still quite highly localised, despite what was said yesterday,’ he told MailOnline. ‘I look at the map where you can check outbreaks and, in my neck of the woods, there are huge stretches of land where there are less than two cases.
‘It suggests to me that local lockdowns or local restrictions are still the best way forward and the broad brush approach is, at best, premature.
‘I think the Government has maybe decided to bring in this “rule of six” because it will have a smaller economic impact than closing pubs or schools, but there will be an economic impact. You can’t have more than six people in a group in restaurants, for example.
‘I know the hospitality industry is very concerned. (They) are still trying to balance the economy and risk to some extent, but they got the balance wrong.’
Mr Johnson said the move to crack down on social gatherings was aimed at ‘simplifying and strengthening the rules on social contact’ and ‘making them easier to understand and for the police to enforce’.
He admitted lockdown rules have become ‘complicated and confusing’. The Government have been encouraging Britons to return to work, eat out in restaurants and shop confidently over the past few months.
But the PM is facing a Tory revolt today, with MPs first confronting Matt Hancock in the Commons chamber yesterday.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 backbench committee, said the ‘profound restrictions’ had not been considered enough.
He asked Matt Hancock in the Commons: ‘Why has there not been a debate or vote in the House of Commons this week?’
Former minister Harriet Baldwin said she was concerned the government was imposing ‘more restrictions on people’s liberty’.
She said the goal previously had been to avoid the NHS being swamped. ‘Has he now gone further and is he aiming for zero Covid in England?’ she added.
Another MP told MailOnline Mr Johnson would unfairly end up being seen as ‘the Grinch’ if the restrictions dragged on to Christmas – especially as Ms Sturgeon was being more permissive.
‘It is not him. It is not who he is,’ the MP lamented.
A normally-loyal backbencher said they were completely miserable about the situation.
‘I hate it. I think it is stupid… if it’s got to be done it has got to be done, but I don’t like it,’ they said. ‘You think ”boll***s to this, we should let it all drop now.’
The PM is facing a Tory revolt today after announcing people should start to ‘limit social contact’ again from Monday
The MP added grudgingly: ‘I suppose if they do all this and it stops another lockdown it will be worth it.’
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon copied the ‘rule of six’ on social gatherings – but declared that children under 12 will be exempt.
The First Minister warned that the R rate could be as high as 1.5 north of the border as she announced that a planned easing of restriction would not be going ahead from next week.
Ms Sturgeon announced that a loosening previously hoped for from September 14 in Scotland – which up to now has been under tougher rules than England – would have to be put on hold for a further three weeks.
‘Unfortunately, due to the rise in cases we have seen since then, we have concluded that these changes must be paused for a further three weeks,’ she said.
Ms Sturgeon said that the decision ‘means unfortunately spectators will not be able to return to sports stadia and other venues over the next three weeks’ with a new indicative date given of October 5.
It comes as documents reveal Mr Johnson’s own SAGE experts raised serious doubts about his ‘moonshot’ plan for mass testing to save Christmas, costing £10billion.
The PM mooted the radical scheme at a Downing Street press conference last night as a way of returning the country to normality, with 10million people a day screened using rapid new kits.
But a SAGE assessment from August 31 insisted ‘careful consideration’ should be given to whether pouring resources into the scheme was more effective than boosting funding to Test & Trace, or encouraging people with symptoms to self-isolate.
The elite group said the ‘cheaper, faster tests’ needed for mass testing would inevitably be less accurate, and the screening could only be a ‘component’ of efforts to tackle the virus.
Ministers admitted this morning that the testing technology does not yet exist, with the government’s own scientists saying there is no guarantee it will ever be developed.
Minutes after the plans were unveiled by PM at yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said the technology was not yet available, warning he should not put a date on when it would be because ‘that’s not how science works’.
And Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance said: ‘There are prototypes which look as though they have some effect, but they’ve got to be tested properly.
‘We would be completely wrong to assume this is a slam dunk that can definitely happen.’
MailOnline analysis shows infections have surged from 9.2 to 28 cases per 100,000 since July 4, ‘Super Saturday’, in those aged 20 to 29 in England
At the same time, cases in over 80 year olds have dropped drastically since the height of the pandemic, when they made up the majority of Covid-19 cases, and have halved since July. Infections have stayed stable among those in their 60s and 70s, while very slightly increasing in those between the ages of 40 to 59 years old
On Thursday morning, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps declined to give a timeframe for when the tests would be read.
He was realistic about the fact that it could be a long time, telling Sky News: ‘This is technology that, to be perfectly blunt, requires further development – there isn’t a certified test in the world that does this but there are people that are working on prototypes.’
The government currently spends £130bn on the NHS in England each year, so the cost of the testing plan, revealed by the British Medical Journal, would almost match the amount of funding pledged to the entire health service, which in itself represents some 20 per cent of all public spending.
It also equates to the cost of the nation’s education budget and represents a near-30-fold increase in the UK’s testing capacity, with daily capacity standing at around 350,000.
Sir David Spiegelhalter, a professor of risk at Cambridge University, said statisticians were ‘banging their heads on the wall’ at the idea the scheme would be effective.
‘Mass testing always seems like a good idea in any disease. ”Oh yes, let’s test everybody.” But the huge danger is false positives,’ he said.
‘No tests are perfect. It’s not a simple yes, no thing. If you are going to have a test that would allow someone into a theatre or allow them back to work you have to be really sure they are not infectious.’
‘Even if you only have 1 per cent false positives among the people who are not infectious, and you are testing the whole country, that is 600,000 people unnecessarily labelled as positives – for all that implication for them and their contacts.
‘There is no indication in the leaked documents that anybody is taking into account these issues about false positives…. Let alone all the logistical issues. I am deeply concerned about this.’
Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said even with the right technology, there would be big issued with the system. She said it should be viewed as part of the wider response – suggesting people who test negative but have symptoms would still need to quarantine.
She told BBC Breakfast: ‘So that, if you have, for example, a false negative test, but you feel assured that you don’t have the disease, you don’t end up going back into the workplace.
‘Which brings me back to why it’s still so important that the critical measure here – although testing is really important, whether it be mass testing or whether it be our routine NHS Test and Trace – the issue is that if people have symptoms they need to come out of society in order to prevent disease transmission.’