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Summary
- The government has decided to move more than 30 authorities of England to higher tiers from Boxing Day
- The decision from the government has been taken well in advance ahead of the scheduled review point of 30 December
- Spiralling number of cases and proportionately climbing rate of hospital admissions have been the major reasons to worry
The unending worries around the coronavirus cases in England have soared to a new level, that too around the festivities of Christmas and Boxing Day when people are highly eager to travel and meet their relatives than any other time of the year. Following the recent unscheduled review of the authorities by the government, it has been decided that more areas of England will be shifted to higher tiers.
Decision before scheduled review
Initially, the government was supposed to review the situation on 30 December but due to the exponential rise in the new cases in past weeks, the decision has been taken in advance.
According to the government, England has seen massive spikes in the new Covid-19 cases after the nation-wide lockdown was lifted with the situation in the South and East of England deteriorating further. In a move to arrest the spread of the newly-identified and more transmissible strain of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) virus, the government has acted before the formal review point.
Concerning areas
The day-after-day spiralling number of new coronavirus cases and relatively climbing rate of hospital admissions have been the major reasons to worry even as the healthcare department has started inoculating the vulnerable patients with the limited-available stock of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Meanwhile, the latest analysis by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) indicating that “the variant is more transmissible than other strains” has furthered the fear. The rate of weekly increase in the coronavirus cases in the East of England between 9 and 16 December jumped exceptionally to 100 per cent to 380 per 100,000, the data provided by the government of the UK showed.
List of areas moving to higher tiers from 26 December
Tier 4: West Sussex, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Waverley Borough, Brighton and Hove, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Southampton will be moving to “Tier 4: Stay at Home” from 26 December.
Other than these, the remaining areas of Essex not already in Tier 4 including Tendring District, Uttlesford District Councils, and Colchester Borough; Basingstoke and Deane Borough, East Hampshire District, Eastleigh Borough, Fareham Borough, Hart District, Rushmoor Borough, Test Valley Borough, Winchester City Councils of Hampshire; and the left-out locations of East Sussex including District Council, Wealden District Council, and Eastbourne Borough Council, will be moving to Tier 4.
Tier 3: Swindon, Isle of Wight, Bristol, Warrington, North Somerset, Somerset, Cheshire West and Chester, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, New Forest District, and Cheshire East will be moving to “Tier 3: Very High” from the Boxing Day.
Tier 2: Only Cornwall and Herefordshire authority areas will be moving from “Tier 1: Medium” to “Tier 2: High”.
