NINETEEN out of 20 areas under local lockdown in England have suffered huge increases in known Covid-19 infections since the restrictions were imposed, Labour analysis revealed today.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called on PM Boris Johnson to tell locked-down communities what he thinks the “central problem” behind the rise in reported cases might be.
Restrictions first came into force in Wigan, now in its second local lockdown, on July 30. Since then the town’s case count has increased by nearly 38 times — from just six in 100,000 people when restrictions first came into force to 225 known cases per 100,000 now.
The case rate in Burnley, which was put under restrictions on July 31, has increased more than 20-fold since the measures were imposed — from 21 cases per 100,000 people to 434 per 100,000.
Nearby Bolton and Bury, both of which have been under restrictions since the end of July, have had their infection rates increase by almost 13 times.
The Labour leader asked the PM: “It is obvious that something has gone wrong here, so what is he going to do about it?”
“The Prime Minister really needs to understand that local communities are angry and frustrated,” he said.
Mr Johnson said that the “problem is, alas, that the disease continues to spread” and that he had already explained why.
He criticised Sir Keir for Labour’s abstention on Tuesday night’s vote on the “rule of six,” which currently restricts social gatherings to that number of people, despite having backed it before the vote took place.
Sir Keir said he supports the rule, but that if the PM is not factoring in local concerns about rising case-counts “and he does not realise that is a problem, then that is part of the problem.”
He also pointed out that there are 62 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people in the PM’s local authority of Hillingdon, yet no local restrictions have been put in place.
But, in the 20 locked-down areas across England, restrictions were imposed when infection rates were much lower.
“The Prime Minister cannot explain why an area goes into restriction, he cannot explain what the different restrictions are and he cannot explain how restrictions end. This is getting ridiculous,” Sir Keir said.
