Editorials

The Irish Times view on Covid-19 in the UK: stumbling into another crisis

The longer Boris Johnson’s delays introducing basic mitigation measures, the more likely it is that the UK will be forced to adopt wider restrictions

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said Mr Johnson 'has got a clear mandate and we have got to give him time and space to deliver on that mandate'. Photograph: Tolga Akmen / AFP via Getty Images

Wed Oct 20 2021 - 19:00

Some 223 people died of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom on Tuesday – the highest daily death toll from the disease since March. A further 43,738 new cases were confirmed. Daily hospital admissions are approaching 1,000 for the first time in more than a month. "For now, we think that the policy is working," says business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng. If this is success, what would failure look like?

The situation across the UK has so alarmed the health service that calls for new restrictions are growing louder. With hospitals facing into a difficult winter, the National Health Service Confederation, which represents healthcare operators in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, has warned that the country risks "stumbling into a crisis" unless preventive action is taken.

A variety of reasons have been suggested for the UK's incidence rate, which is higher than in much of western Europe. Its early progress on vaccination meant that waning immunity was always likely to become apparent before it did in countries that got off to a slower start. Its heavy use of the AstraZeneca shot, which studies suggest may wane slightly faster than the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, could also be a factor.

But while waning immunity was outside the control of Boris Johnson’s government – and its introduction of a booster shot programme is an attempt to remedy the problem – some of its own decisions have undoubtedly compromised the UK’s ability to keep the disease under control. To all intents and purposes, England is behaving as if the pandemic is over. Capacity crowds attend indoor and outdoor events. Mask-wearing has declined dramatically. Social distancing is largely a thing of the past. In addition, the government was late to authorise vaccines for teenagers, a delay that allowed the virus to circulate more widely in early autumn. When health service representatives call on Johnson’s government to adopt “plan B” of its strategy, they are only suggesting a return to measures that are still commonplace around Europe: requiring people to wear masks in crowded places, discouraging unnecessary indoor gatherings, and working from home if possible.

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Yesterday Kwarteng said plan B was not yet necessary. His rather questionable logic was that while the death rate was very high it was still lower than during the third wave.

Given the high price that people across the UK are paying for the surge in cases, the case for straightforward measures such as mask-wearing and smaller crowd sizes is obvious. The longer Johnson delays, the more likely it is that the UK will be forced to reintroduce wider restrictions such as school closures or a ban on foreign travel. And given the heavy traffic across the Irish Sea, the longer it takes Britain to bring Covid-19 under control the more difficult it will be for Ireland to contain its own rising case count.

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