London mayor Sadiq Khan calls for coronavirus restrictions on capital
London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has called for new coronavirus restrictions in the British capital as the UK struggles to contain an imminent second wave of the pandemic.
Following a meeting with officials across London, Khan issued a statement saying “we have no choice but to look at other measures to slow the spread [of the coronavirus]”.
Khan blamed the current difficulties in part on the absence of an effective testing and tracing system.
Khan has been consistently calling for tougher measures in London – and nationally – to contain a widely expected second wave of the pandemic.
The mayor of London’s intervention comes against the backdrop of the collective call by the UK’s chief medical officers to raise the coronavirus alert level from level 3 to 4, indicating that the risk of transmission is “high or rising exponentially”.
The chief medical officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland issued the following statement: "After a period of lower Covid cases and deaths, the number of cases are now rising rapidly and probably exponentially in significant parts of all four nations”.
"If we are to avoid significant excess deaths and exceptional pressure in the NHS [National Health Service] and other health services over the autumn and winter everyone has to follow the social distancing guidance, wear face coverings correctly and wash their hands regularly”, the chief medical officers added.
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is set to chair a COBRA meeting on Tuesday morning (September 22) to address the growing crisis.
For his part, the mayor of London met with council leaders and government officials on Friday (September 18) to consider imposing some of the types of coronavirus-related measures and restrictions already applied in other parts of the country.
Currently London has the third-lowest case rate of Covid-19 infections per 100,000 people in England, just behind the East Midlands and East Anglia.
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