ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのBoris Johnson Lockdown Announcement 10/12

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m glad that we have the Chancellor Rishi Sunak with us and our Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty.

We’re entering a new and crucial phase in our fight against coronavirus because the number of cases has gone up four times in four weeks and it’s once again, spreading among the elderly and vulnerable. There are already more COVID patients in UK hospitals today than there were on the 23rd of March when the whole country went into lockdown and deaths, alas, are also rising once again.

These figures are flashing at us like dashboard warnings in a passenger jet, and we must act now. So we’re giving local authorities across England around a billion pounds so they can protect vital services as they fight the virus, Nightingale hospitals across the North of England are being prepared for service, and so we can squash this virus wherever it appears we are today simplifying, standardizing, and in some places, toughening local rules in England by introducing three levels of COVID alert.

Boris Johnson: (06:21)
Medium with existing national measures, such as the rule of six and the closure of hospitality at 10:00 PM. High with extra measures, including a ban on indoor social mixing between households or support bubbles. And very high for places where without further action, the NHS will swiftly be under intolerable pressure. Areas within the very high alert category will be reviewed every four weeks and nowhere will be shut down indefinitely. The exact restrictions at this level, very high, will be worked out with local leaders along with tailored packages of support.

But at a minimum, at a minimum, they will sadly include a ban on all social mixing between households and private places, including gardens. Pubs and bars must close unless they can operate solely as a restaurant serving alcohol only as part of a main meal. We will also ask people not to travel into an outdoor very high alert level areas.

No one affected by this will be left to fend for themselves, and we’re going to expand our unprecedented economic support to assist those affected by these decisions, extending our job support scheme to cover two thirds of the wages of those in any business that is required to close and providing those businesses with a cash grant of up to 3000 pounds a month instead of 1500 pounds every three weeks. And extra funding too, for those in the very high category for local test and trace and enforcement.

You will shortly be able to type in your postcode to gov.uk and see exactly what restrictions apply where you live. The majority of the country will for now be at medium. Most areas, currently under local intervention, will be at high and Nottinghamshire, including Nottingham itself, Eastern West Cheshire, and a small area of High Peak will also move to this level.

Over the weekend, we’ve been working with local leaders in areas where the data are most worrying and from Wednesday, local authorities in the Liverpool city region, will move to the very high alert level.

In addition to pubs and bars, we’ve agreed with Liverpool city mayor, Steve Rotheram, that gyms, leisure centers, betting shops, adult gaming centers, and casinos will close. We’re still working with other local leaders to determine how best to tackle the resurgence of the virus in their areas, but tackle it we will. No one wants to impose these kinds of, least of all me, wants to impose these kinds of restrictions, erosions of our personal liberty, but I’m as convinced as I’ve ever been that the British people have the resolve to beat this virus and that together we will do just that.

With that, I’m going to hand over to the chancellor who has some more details on how we’ll be supporting these businesses, employees and areas affected by today’s changes. Rishi, over to you.

Rishi Sunak: (09:47)
Thanks, PM. Good evening. The Prime Minister has set out the next stage in our health response to tackling coronavirus, and I know people are frustrated at the prospect of further restrictions, but I want to reassure you that we have a comprehensive plan to protect jobs and businesses in every region and nation of the United Kingdom.
Our winter economy plan has three parts. First, the job support scheme will protect jobs, whether your business is open or closed. If your business can open safely, but with reduced or uncertain demand, the government will directly subsidize people’s wages over the winter, giving businesses the option to bring people back to work on shorter hours, rather than making them redundant. That’s the right approach for businesses who can remain open. But businesses who are being asked to close will need further support, so on Friday I announced that we’re expanding the jobs support scheme. If the closures mean you are unable to work for one week or more, your employer will still be able to pay you two thirds of your normal salary, and the UK government will cover the cost. This national program will benefit people the same wherever they live and whatever job they do.

The existing furlough scheme continues throughout October with the new job support scheme available from November so there is no gap in support. And to give people and businesses certainty, this scheme will run for six months through to next spring. The job support scheme is in line with most other major European countries. And to support the lowest paid through this crisis, we have also made our welfare system more generous and more responsive too.

Second, businesses in England who are legally required to close can now claim a cash grant of up to 3000 pounds per month, depending on the value of their business premises. Those grants can be used for any business cost and will never need to be repaid. And I’m guaranteeing an extra 1.3 billion pounds of funding to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland administrations if they choose to do something similar.
Third, the Prime Minister has announced today we are providing additional funding for local authorities. For local authorities entering level three, we’re providing up to half a billion pounds to fund activities like enforcement, compliance, and contact tracing. And to protect vital services, we’re providing around a billion pounds of additional funding for all local authorities on top of the 3.7 billion pounds we’ve already provided since March.
Our winter economy plan will give people and businesses, flexibility and certainty over the coming months, whether they are open or required to close, all part of our plan to protect the jobs-
… all part of our plan to protect the jobs and livelihoods of the British people. Thank you.

Boris Johnson: Thanks very much Richie. Chris.

Chris Whitty: Thanks PM. Could I have the first slide, please?
The slides that follow, tell a story that is relatively clear to understand. This is the first slide, is from the Office for National Statistics, ONS, household infection survey, and it’s in our view the most robust study of the virus. And what it shows is the prevalence, how many people had it in the population from the end of April through to the beginning of October. And as you can see on this graph, the numbers of people with it went down really steadily through to the beginning of June, thanks to the remarkable efforts of the entire nation. And then continued down at a low level until the beginning of September, at which point they began to rise again. And you can see on this graph that they’re now really up to a level that was there at the beginning of May. Next slide please. Can we go back one slide, please?
If we look at the geographical spread of COVID in the UK at this … in England, sorry, at the moment, at this point in time, on the left here we have a map which shows the current prevalence, how many people have got it. And you can see the darker colors, which is where the most transmission is occurring are very clear on the map on the left. And on the right what we have is a map which shows the rate of change of this, and the darker colors show the more rapid change. And you can see on this map that this is now extending considerably beyond just the areas in the Northwest, Northeast, and parts of the Midlands. So there is already clear evidence of spread around the country, but at this point in time heavily centered on the areas of intervention. Next slide, please. One slide back, please.

The geographical spread in people over the age of 60 is however, really important. And this is what this map shows. It’s the same as the last one, except as you can see, the area is much more concentrated because you start off with transmission in younger people, and then it moves up the age bands. But the reason that this is very important and I’ll show this really clearly on the last slide of this pack is that the rate in people over 60 is a very good predictor in a bad way for the rates of people going into hospital. Next slide please. If we then use the ONS data in the different regions of the country, you can see that the rates since the middle of August have been going up steadily in the Northeast, the Northwest, and parts of Yorkshire and the Humber. Next slide, please. At a more moderate rate in the Eastern and West Midlands and in London. Next slide, please. And at a much lower rate currently. But I think we should be not lulled into a false sense of security here, in the Southwest, the East of England, and the Southeast. Next slide, please.
I think something which has got a lot of attraction over the last few days in the press is the fact that there are very variable rates by different age groups. And in blue, light blue, we have those 10 and 19. In reality this is mainly people over the age of 16, and in green those 20 to 29. And what we have in these areas is the first rapid rise is in younger people, but then you start to see rises across the entire age group. And illustrated this in the Northeast, the Northwest, and Yorkshire and Humber. But the same pattern is being seen at a much lower rate elsewhere in the country. Next slide, please.

Now, I think there was a hope that this would not translate into hospital admissions, but the hospital admissions occur at the high end of the age range. And what we have here is everybody admitted to hospital with COVID since the middle of July. And again, initially a steady fall due to the work that everyone had put in, but on the right a rise, which is on every age band, but in particular, in those aged over 65, over 75, and in particular those over 85. And what this is translating into is an increase in hospitalization, in particular in those areas where there is a high transmission. So this is not just rates going up. This is rates going into hospital are going up. Next slide please.
So the final slide is just to show that regrettably, when you start to see a rise in the rates going into hospital in people over the age of 60, that is mirrored almost exactly with some delay with rates going into hospital, and those curves follow one another inexorably. So watching those rates of people over 60 rising in the community will translate into cases in hospital.

My final point is a more optimistic one. If we had not been doing all the things that everybody is currently doing, if there had not been in every business a real attempt to try and be COVID secure and to limit the amounts of transmission, if people were not seeing fewer numbers of people, which is clearly happening across society, the rates that we’re seeing in these graphs would be substantially higher in my view, and certainly I think in general most people’s view significantly higher across the whole country.
So what people are doing now are significantly reducing the rates compared to where they would have been. But what we can see is that we need to go further or these rates will continue inexorably to rise. Thank you very much.

Boris Johnson:
Thanks very much, Chris. Very, very clear indeed. And let’s go, first of all, to questions from the public. Helen from Darby is on the video.

Helen: (19:38)
Following your announcement, the businesses who need to close during localized lockdowns will receive targeted further support for their employees. What support is there for industries like the event sector, who due to government restrictions have been shut down since March?

Boris Johnson: (19:56)
Well, I should say that all businesses that have been forced to close get the JSS, the Job Support System that Rishi has announced. But Rishi, why don’t you say a bit more about what businesses like the events sector? I mean, you’re right Helen. It’s a massive business. I think it’s worth about 90 billion to our country, but there’s plenty that we’re doing to support it.

Rishi Sunak: (20:19)
Yeah, thanks PM and thanks Helen. You’re absolutely right. We’ve put support in place since March for across hospitality, leisure, and retail through our business rates reduction program. So people with physical properties are not paying any business rates. Many businesses would have received cash grants of £10,000 or £25,000 at that time. But you’re right. There are some sectors which are now not able to trade in the way that they normally would. And for those, what we’ve put in place is the Job Support Scheme, which allows companies who are open but not trading to benefit from wage support from the government. So they can bring employees back, but not at the same level that they previously had because the demand is not quite there, the activity’s not quite there. And that wage subsidy will help. And that’s something we announced a few weeks ago.
I think more broadly, there are specific businesses that are being told to close by government, not just now going forward in this localized way that have been told to close for a while. And now if you’re in that category, nightclubs being another one for example, you will be able to benefit from the expansion of the JSS. If you’ve been told to close in the past, and that continues, you will also be eligible for that extra support and those extra business grants.
But I’m very sympathetic to your situation and those of other businesses like yours, and we’re all keen to try and find a way where we can to get our economy going and get your businesses back to life as well. That’s the best way in the long-term to try and protect the jobs that your sector has.

Boris Johnson: (21:45)
Brilliant. Thanks, Rishi. Let’s go to Charlotte from Chesterfield. Charlotte asks: After months apart from our extended families, many people are clinging to hope of having some kind of family Christmas, though understandably not a normal one. What kind of restrictions do you expect over the festive period, Charlotte asks.
Well, all I can say, Charlotte, and to millions who are wondering the same question is that we’ll do our absolute best to try to make sure that we get life back to as close to normal as possible for Christmas. But that is going to depend I’m afraid on our success in getting this virus down and our ability as a country to follow through on the package of measures. And I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, but it will mean that in those local areas that we’ve talked about, we’re not only going to have to intensify the measures, but we’re going to have to enforce generally the social distancing, the rules, the guidance, hands, face, space, get a test if you have symptoms, self-isolate if you’re contacted by NHS Test and Trace, all that basic stuff is essential if we’re going to come out of this and allow people to have anything like a normal Christmas.
But Chris, is there anything you want to add on, on that? Thanks very much Charlotte. Let’s go to the media. And first to Laura from the BBC.

Laura: (23:18)
Thanks very much Prime Minister, a question for each of you tonight. Prime Minister, you’ve said many times you want to avoid another national lockdown, but it seems every week you introduce extra rules and cases still rise. Are you just delaying the inevitable? And Chancellor, you encouraged people to go out and spend money when cases were much higher still in the North of England than in the South. How do you now expect workers in pubs and bars in the North of England that have to close to live on two thirds of their wages when they can’t pay two thirds of their bills? And Professor Whitty, are you confident what’s being announced now is really enough to slow the spread of the disease? Can I just lastly ask one of you to explain what people who are really vulnerable, who may have been shielding should do now, because we haven’t heard very much about them today?

Boris Johnson: (24:08)
Okay. Well, first of all, Laura, I really hope that we won’t have to go into back into anything like a national lockdown of the kind that we did in March and in April. And I really hope that with the package of measures that we’ve got, if properly implemented and enforced, we can get the R down. I just go back to what Chris was saying. These measures do work. I mean, don’t forget the R was coming down in this country before we went into full lockdown in March, because people had already started to follow guidance about restricting contact and restricting transmission in the way that they needed to do. Lockdown was also essential to drive that home. But this package depends on public support.
I think what’s encouraging today is we’ve got people like Steve Rotheram in the Liverpool city region stepping up with a strong local leadership. I think if we can get that over the next few days across the country in the areas where we’ve got high incidence, that will make a huge, huge difference. But, being that this is a balanced package, we could go for, now for a national lockdown again. I think many people would think that was extreme, and it would do a great deal of extra harm to our economy, to our ability to … We’d have to take kids out of school. It would do a lot of immediate harm. We don’t want to go down that extreme route right now.
Similarly, there are the people on the other side of the argument to say, “Well, let’s just learn to live with this. Let’s stop trying to fight this virus. Let’s stop trying any kind of measures at all to contain it.” I can’t support that approach I’m afraid Laura, because all the maths is brutal, it would lead to too many …
All the maths is brutal, it would lead to too many fatalities. So we have to do a balanced approach, the moderate approach that we’re taking and relying on the public, on the cooperation of local government and government at all levels to make it work.

Male: (26:20)[inaudible 00:00:21].
Boris Johnson: (26:21)[crosstalk 00:26:21]. Yes.