U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a second national lockdown in England beginning on Thursday November 5th.
The lockdown follows a second wave of coronavirus cases soaring across the country. All pubs, restaurants, leisure and entertainment venues including cinemas, and all non-essential retail businesses will close until December 2nd.
After that some areas may go into lower-tier restrictions, depending on the severity of local cases. Schools, universities, courts, construction and parliament will remain open. A furlough scheme that was due to end last week has now been extended until December.
One difference this time – film and TV production will be able to continue under strict COVID-safe guidelines including movies like Matt Reeves’ “The Batman”.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden clarified saying: “The changes mean people should WFH [work from home] where possible. But where this is not possible, travel to a place of work will be permitted – e.g. this includes (but not exhaustive) elite sport played behind closed doors, film & tv production, telecoms workers.”
The Prime Minister will present the new measures to the House of Commons today and they will be put to a vote on Wednesday. The U.K. has recorded 21,915 new cases and 326 deaths in the last 24 hours. There are now more than 1 million cases recorded in total, and deaths have crossed 46,000.
Source: Variety
