Covid-19: Tougher post-lockdown rules 'strike a balance', says PM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55094367

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Tougher rules for England will "strike a balance" when the national lockdown ends next week, Boris Johnson has said.

At a Downing Street briefing, the PM acknowledged that the stricter three-tiered system of regional measures to tackle coronavirus would bring "heartbreak and frustration".

But he said "your tier is not your destiny" and stressed that "every area has the means of escape".

Most of England will be in the toughest two levels of measures from 2 December.

The system will be reviewed every two weeks, with the first review scheduled for 16 December, so an area's tier level may change before Christmas.

What are the new rules?

Check the new tier for your area

The prime minister said the new restrictions were necessary to keep the disease under control, and warned that easing off risked "losing control, casting aside our hard-won gains and forcing us back into a new year national lockdown".

He said there was "no doubt the restrictions in all tiers are tough" but admitted previous tiers "were never quite enough".

The new approach was "designed to reduce" the R number - the average number of people an infected person will pass the disease on to - "below one", he added.

Mr Johnson said mass community testing would be offered to tier three areas "as quickly as possible" and hailed Liverpool City region as a "success story" where this approach had worked and brought the area down to tier two.

The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg asked the PM to clarify "what was the point" of the second national lockdown if more people would now be under tougher rules than they were under before the blanket measures.

Mr Johnson insisted this was "not continuing the lockdown".

"Across all tiers shops will be open, hairdressers, personal services will be open, gyms will be functioning, places of worship will be open for communal worship as well, so this is a very different thing," he said.

The PM added: "And I'm convinced that by April things genuinely will be much, much better."