Johnson Refuses To Confirm If Lockdown Will Be Extended

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to confirm that Britain’s lockdown will be extended for four more weeks, after news reports yesterday said lockdown will last until July. Britons – and thousands of business owners – will have to wait until a briefing on Monday to find out.

Prime Minister Boris John has refused to confirm reports that Britain’s lookdown will be extended until July 19.

Speaking with ITV news today, June 12, Johnson would not be drawn and said details would be revealed on Monday, June 14.

Johnson told ITV, “Well we’re setting out the position on Monday but what I can certainly tell you is that to deliver an irreversible roadmap you’ve got to be cautious; we’re still looking at the data, we’re seeing unquestionably not just cases but also hospitalisations going up – there’ll be arguments about the extent to which they’re going up, extent to which feeding into fatalities. But in order to deliver an irreversible roadmap got to be cautious.

“I think we’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect life in this country,” he added.

Asked if hospitalisations are the key bit of data, Johnson said, “We’re looking at all the data but what we’re wanting to do is avoid another wave of deaths that could be prevented by allowing the vaccines to work in the way that they are – the vaccine programme has been absolutely astonishing and there’s no question that if you look at the people going into hospital now they tend to be in different groups, younger groups than we saw in the first couple of waves of the pandemic, seen different outcomes but it may be that we need in the race between the vaccines and the virus, we need to make sure we give the vaccines extra legs.”

The Prime Minister also said he did not regret not putting India on the red list for travel earlier than April 23.

“We put India on the red list so that you have to spend 10 days quarantining in a hotel if you come from India, which was before the variant was identified as a very aggressive level or a very deep concern,” he said.

The Delta variant currently makes up to 96 per cent of new cases in England.

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