Britain's stand-in leader resisted pressure on Sunday to explain how the government plans to ease a coronavirus lockdown that has been in place for a month, warning that hasty action could result in a second peak of infections.
LONDON - Britain’s stand-in leader resisted pressure on Sunday to explain how the government plans to ease a coronavirus lockdown that has been in place for a month, warning that hasty action could result in a second peak of infections.
Appearing on political TV shows in his last day at the helm, Raab said the government was working privately on how to move out of the lockdown, but that speculating in public might dilute the current guidance to stay at home. The official number of deaths related to COVID-19 in hospitals across the United Kingdom rose above 20,000 on Saturday, with the overall figure likely to be significantly higher once deaths in care homes and hospices are tallied.
Pressed on this in a BBC interview, Raab would say only that there would not be a “binary easing of measures” but rather a gradual progression to a “new normal”.Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer argued in an open letter to Johnson that the British government was falling behind the rest of the world by refusing to say more.
“We need to see a significant step-change in the government’s response to this pandemic. Decisions need to be taken quicker and communication with the public needs to be clearer,” he said. On PPE, he said: “We’re doing everything we can in an international supply shortage to get them the PPE, the equipment that they need, but it hasn’t been easy, we hold our hands up. It hasn’t been easy for any country.”
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