Lockdown could be extended beyond December 2nd, Matt Hancock admits

Matt Hancock says it’s ‘too early to tell’ if this lockdown has done enough.

Hancock said he was unable to rule out an extension of the lockdown, saying it was ‘too early for us to know’ if coronavirus cases had been brought down sufficiently.

Dr Hopkins, one of the Government’s Covid-19 advisors, explained on the press conference on Monday that the lowest local tier restrictions had ‘little effect’, despite Boris explaining he hopes the nation will return to local restrictions.

Dr Hopkins added that they would have to consider strengthening the measures to ‘get us through the winter months until the vaccine is available for everyone’.

Mr Hancock explained that the government does not yet know the impact the lockdown has had. 

He said: “It is too early for us to know what the number of cases will be as we come to the end of the current lockdown.

“But we absolutely hope to be able to replace the national lockdown with a tiered system similar to what we had before.”

Dr Hopkins added that Tier 2 restrictions appeared to work in some areas but ‘not so well in others’.

She said: “We see very little effect from Tier 1 and I think when we look at what tiers may be there in the future, we will have to think about strengthening them in order to get us through the winter months until the vaccine is available for everyone.”

Robert Jenrick confirmed ministers are reviewing the tiering system to decide what restrictions to put in place ahead of the potential end of the national lockdown on December 2nd. 

He said ministers want to see ‘significant easing’ of controls to have a ‘somewhat more normal December’. 

Speaking to Sky News, he explained that an extension of the lockdown would require a vote in parliament. He said: “It is our hope and expectation that that won’t be the case and that people in England will be able to move back into the tiered system.

“There will be a review. That work is undergoing on what those tiers look like and how local areas go back in but that will very much depend on the data. We will have to make decisions nearer the end of the month once we have got the most up-to-date information possible.

“So it is too early to say which tiers people will be able to go into. But we all want to see a significant easing of the measures in all parts of England at the beginning of next month.”

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Jenrick said: “In tier 3 there was a baseline of measures, which the chief medical officer and others have always said was only the beginning, and we then asked local areas to consider whether they would be willing to go further than that, some did, some decided not to.

“So I think in the new tiers we would like greater consistency and we will have to look at the evidence to see which of those measures was actually the most impactful on the virus so that we take the most evidence-based approach that we can do.

“We haven’t come to a conclusion on that yet, to be perfectly honest, but we will be within the next week or so.”