Coronavirus: United Kingdom extends lockdown for another three weeks

The British government has officially announced the extension of nationwide lockdown for ‘at least’ three more weeks, i.e. till May 7.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced the cabinet’s decision to extend the lockdown during the daily Downing Street briefing on Thursday, 16 April 2020. Raab chaired the meeting of the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (Cobra) as he is currently deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is recovering after hospital on being tested positive for coronavirus.

While commenting on the lockdown extension, Dominic Raab stated that for the pandemic any change made to the existing social distancing in place now would risk a resurgence in the spread of the virus and that the efforts being made by the country till now would undo all the progress made so far.

Any further significant rise in the spread of virus due to lifting of lockdown would result in ‘even longer and more restrictive social distancing measures,’ he added.

The pandemic has so far infected more than 100,000 people in the country out of which nearly 13,500 people have been reported dead. Given the pace with which the pandemic had been spreading in the country, the British government had imposed a lockdown in the country last month on March 23.

It is considered as United Kingdom’s first such experience with a pandemic in the recent era. Even during the Breakout of the SARS epidemic, the country was not severely hit and there was just one infected case in the Republic of Ireland as unprecedented measures were put in place at that time to protect the country from the epidemic. However, another species from the same group SARS-CoV2 became the cause of deadly coronavirus disease-COVID-19- that first began in the city of China, Wuhan in December 2019. Its speed and magnitude is relatively much higher than any other virus experienced before, leading to a lethal pandemic.

Within the British establishment, the junior health minister of the country Nadine Dorries first tested positive for the virus on 11 March 2020, and that too while the parliament was in session. The media reports have shown that she had met hundreds of people in the days in the run up to her diagnosis. Soon after it was reported that Prince Charles has also been diagnosed with this disease followed by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The prime minister had to be hospitalised and had to spend some time in the ICU before making good recovery. As per the official information, prime minister is currently out of danger and is recuperating after receiving treatment for the disease to assume office shortly. However, till that time, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is reportedly manning the position for Boris Johnson.

These are truly unprecedented times for the United Kingdom. Not many of the cabinet ministers, members of parliament or critical government functionaries have infected so far otherwise the situation would have been far more worrisome.

The outbreak of the pandemic and the lockdown conditions in the country have pushed the country to the brink of a recession. Already a large number of businesses in the country have been reporting a significant drop in revenues on account of lockdown, leading to huge loss of business activities. Only a few sectors like healthcare and online retailing have been resilient in this period as they have been providing critical services in fighting this pandemic and keeping the people adequately provisioned with the basic goods and services.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced its expectation for the British economy to shrink by 6.5 percent in 2020. Similarly, the office for the Budget responsibility had published a report earlier this week which stated that the British economy would contract by nearly 35 percent during the April and June this year and by 13 per cent when taking the full year into account. While terming the crisis worse than the 2008 financial crisis, Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stated that the recessions would be one of the worst hit economic crisis to be faced by the country since the World War II. It also estimated that the lockdown conditions could increase unemployment in the country by nearly 2 million. The British Chambers of Commerce recently reported that as much as two third of the businesses in the country are expected to avail of the governments Furloughing scheme under which the businesses can claim for up to 80 percent of wages of a furloughed employee, subject to a maximum of £2,500 a month. Initially it was estimated that the scheme would place a burden of around £10 billion on the exchequer but now the market expects that the government’s furloughing scheme would cost them three times higher to £40 billion in three months. On the same issue the Office of the National Statistics reported that it expects as many as 25 percent of the businesses in the country to either close their businesses temporarily or halt trading till better times come to prevail, which would lead to as much as a third of the employees to be furloughed.

It’s not just the United Kingdom, but several other countries are also extending their pandemic lockdowns. There has been a great suffering time for the poor and impoverished people in the world who have been having great difficulty in finding livelihood ever since the pandemic has made its presence felt. The unemployment rates across the world has seen a sudden rise and the entire world economy is set to go through a deep economic crash because of the pandemic. In fact, it has been stated by the IMF chief that the economic fallout of this pandemic is going to be even worse than the great recessions of the 1930’s; it is extremely important that an early resolution be found to contain the spread of this pandemic. The longer the pandemic lingers, the larger is going to be the economic and humanitarian cost that the world will have to suffer.