London: City centres reverted to ghost towns as England’s 56 million people entered a second coronavirus lockdown on Thursday, amid scepticism that the stringent curbs will work to arrest the worst death toll in Europe.
World-famous tourist destinations such as London’s Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square were deserted, and normally bustling cities including Manchester and Liverpool likewise fell quiet.
In the hours before the lockdown took effect at midnight, some revellers clashed with police outside packed pubs, including in parts of London and the northern city of Leeds.
Miles-long traffic jams also developed as motorists sought to escape the British capital. "You can’t imagine from yesterday to today how different it is. It’s completely dead now," Maria Belkihel, 42, told AFP in London’s best known shopping spot, Oxford Street.
"Christmas is coming and people want to do their Christmas shopping," the Londoner said. Last weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson abandoned a recently introduced system of regional curbs and announced an England-wide shutdown, after dire warnings that hospitals could soon be overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases.
The Bank of England on Thursday unveiled an extra £150 billion ($195 billion) in economic support, on top of new Treasury measures to subsidise the wages of furloughed workers until March 2021.
The package gives "absolute certainty that we’ll do whatever it takes" to support jobs, Johnson’s spokesman told reporters, ahead of the latest televised address by the prime minister later Thursday.
But while opinion polls suggest overall public backing for the revived stay-at-home policy, concerns are mounting about the impact on the economy and mental health. A sizeable minority of 34 MPs from Johnson’s ruling Conservative party rebelled against the new measures on Wednesday during a vote in parliament.
Another 18 abstained, including his predecessor Theresa May. "We have been making progress," the prime minister’s spokesman insisted. "The measures we have in place have helped to keep the R (transmission rate) down, but we do believe that we need to introduce these new, tougher national measures to go further and protect the NHS (National Health Service)," he said.
Johnson, adamant the lockdown will end on December 2, is pinning his hopes on an ambitious new programme of Covid testing to detect and isolate infected people, starting with a city-wide trial launching in Liverpool on Friday.
But so far, despite government spending of £12 billion on testing programmes, researchers say that most members of the public are failing to isolate or report their contacts fully. Around 2,000 military personnel are being mobilised to help in the Liverpool pilot.
The new restrictions bring England into line with other parts of the UK, which have their own devolved governments, and with nations in Europe including France. They include a return to working from home where possible and the closure of all non-essential shops and services. Schools will remain open. Exemptions include outdoor exercise and visits to the doctor or pharmacy.
Michael Eppy, a public relations expert on his way to a medical appointment, remarked on how quiet it was around King’s Cross station, one of London’s major rail gateways and adjacent to the Eurostar terminal for high-speed services to Europe.
"I don’t think anyone is particularly happy about the lockdown," he said. Doubting Johnson’s assurances of a four-week limit, Eppy, 35, said: "However long this lockdown lasts, it is this government that is 100 percent culpable."
Meanwhile, The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Europe on Thursday said they were seeing an "explosion" of virus cases in the European region and warned mortality rates were also rising.
"We do see an explosion.... in the sense it only takes a couple of days to have over the European region an increase of one million cases," WHO’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told AFP.
And while the mortality rate could also be seen rising "little by little", Kluge cautioned that closing schools should be seen as a last resort.
"We need to keep the schools open really until last because we cannot afford a Covid-19 lost generation," Kluge said. However the regional director also said that the "status quo is not an option," and called for "proportionate targeted measures," which could be scaled up.
WHO Europe includes 53 countries, including Russia and countries in Central Asia, and on Thursday reported a total of over 12 million cases recorded in the region, with nearly two million in the last seven days.
In a related development, protesting students staged blockades at several high schools across France on Thursday, burning trash cans to press for better coronavirus protection measures in an environment many fear could be fuelling the pandemic’s rapid spread.
It was the third day of demonstrations by teenagers at high schools, or lycees, sometimes with the backing of teachers, claiming that "non-existent" anti-infection measures are placing them at risk.
Several hundred students blockaded the lycee of Bourdonnieres in Nantes in western France, holding up traffic outside and burning trash cans, according to police who dispersed the gathering and arrested two people.
In Paris, four schools were briefly closed in protests that police said ended peacefully. There were also demonstrations at high schools on the French island of Corsica, in Seine-et-Marne east of Paris and in Pont-l’Abbe on the west coast.
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