Boris Johnson’s justifications for lockdown

Boris Johnson this evening tried to give a little more background to why he had called England’s latest lockdown – and why he had confidence that this really was the darkness before the dawn. The Prime Minister told the Downing Street coronavirus briefing (yes, we are back in that sort of lockdown) that more than 1 million people in England are now infected with Covid – around 2 per cent of the population, according to the ONS – but that as of today, the same number of people in England, and a total of 1.3 million people across the UK, have received the vaccine.

He had to explain why he had changed his tune on schools so rapidly, going from insisting that most schools should return to cancelling face-to-face teaching within 36 hours. His answer was that he had tried to do everything he could to keep schools open because of the disadvantages that many pupils face when trying to learn remotely but that ‘alas’ this wasn’t possible.