As you are all probably aware, Boris Johnson announced last Monday evening that a third national lockdown would be imposed in England starting from the 5^th of January. With restrictions expected to remain in place until the middle of February, although most recently hints have been dropped that we may see the restrictions into some time in March.

Restrictions are expected to be in place for quite some time into the future, with the earliest date for opening hospitality considered to be May.

“We can’t predict with certainty that we’ll be able to lift restrictions the week commencing the 15 to 22 February, what we will be doing is everything we can to make sure that as many people as possible are vaccinated so that we can begin progressively to lift restrictions,” Michael Gove indicated.

Coronavirus cases are rising at alarming rates, showing an increase of 51,135 positive tests received from the 28^th of December to the 3^rd of January; Sars-cov-2 is proving relentless at spreading through the whole of the UK.

The current lockdown rules in place mean that people are again restricted to only leaving their house for necessary reasons. These include:

• Shopping for necessities.
• Going to work, or providing voluntary or charitable services, if that cannot be done from home.
• Exercising with your household (or support bubble) or one other person, once a day, and not outside of your local area.
• To meet with your support bubble or childcare bubble where necessary, but only if legally permitted to form one.
• To seek medical assistance or avoid injury, illness, or risk of harm.
• To attend education or childcare for those eligible.

People who risk the breaking of these rules could be faced with a fixed penalty notice of £200.

Despite the opening of seven new mass vaccination sites, and over 1.3 million vaccinations already distributed, health secretary Matt Hancock said that, with hospital cases and deaths still rising steeply, the NHS is ‘probably under the greatest pressure that it has ever been’.

The new vaccination centres are opening at the following locations: The ExCel centre in London, Ashton Gate in Bristol, Epsom racecourse in Surrey, Millennium Point in Birmingham; Robertson House in Stevenage; Etihad tennis club in Manchester; and the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The centres will be joined by hundreds more GP sites and a small number of new pharmacy-led centres this week, taking the total number of places offering the Coronavirus vaccine to around 1,200, according to NHS England.

Amongst fears that there may be a lot more cases that original data from the track and trace app suggests, there has been talk that the current lockdown measures are inadequate.

So not only are we looking at an extended date for lockdown relief, but we may also be hit with even harsher restrictions.

Reports suggest that these restrictions could include a ban on exercising with those outside of your household, the end of support bubbles, the closure of nurseries and stricter restrictions in supermarkets again.

See an up-to-date documentation of Coronavirus statistics on the Gov website here.

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