The delicate balancing act of lockdown messaging

Matt Hancock spent Monday evening trying to explain a very delicate tension to the public. There’s the good news of the vaccine and his determination that all four of the most vulnerable priority groups will be vaccinated by mid-February. And then there’s the bad news that in the meantime, coronavirus is spreading and we haven’t yet seen the worst of its impact on the NHS.

So alongside announcing that more than 2.3 million people across the UK have had their first dose of the vaccine, Hancock warned at Monday night’s Downing Street press briefing that unless the public sticks to the rules, he will have to tighten restrictions on meeting others for exercise. He did, however, rule out ending support and childcare bubbles, saying: ‘I know how important they are to people and they are an important part of the system that we have got to support people’. But he did warn that people must also stick to just one bubble, rather than moving between groups in order to socialise.