Chris Whitty: tier three alone will not be enough

Chris Whitty made clear at tonight’s press conference with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that he doesn’t think that the tier three restrictions are enough to get on top of the virus in the worst hit places. He was explicit that local councils will need to go even further in terms of closures in some places. Later in the press conference he said that the government ‘knew full lockdown works’ but it was also aware of the societal and economic harm it does, and the government rightly wants to keep schools open. Taken together, the answers strongly implied that Whitty thinks that in Covid hotspots everything apart from schools should be under consideration for being closed.

Perhaps the biggest take-away from Boris Johnson’s remarks is that he wants more places to agree to go into tier three – something Greater Manchester has been resisting. He repeatedly praised the Liverpool City Mayor Steve Rotheram for accepting that his city region should be classified as tier three (though Rotheram