RPT: ANALYSIS - Challenges Mount For UK Government Amid Second COVID-19 Lockdown In England

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2020) The UK government is facing an increasingly tough challenge to maintain public consent following the reintroduction of nationwide lockdown measures in England in early November, as Whitehall's efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 collide with mounting criticism over the government's handling of the epidemiological crisis, experts told Sputnik.

The United Kingdom was hit by a second wave of COVID-19 in early fall as the number of new cases reportedly daily rose rapidly from roughly 2,500 in early September to approximately 20,000 by late October.

The government responded to the surge in new infections by enacting localized measures, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced a three-tiered COVID-19 alert system on October 12.

As the government enforced local lockdowns, Labour leader Keir Starmer urged the government to introduce a short nationwide lockdown, also known as a "circuit breaker," to bring the rising rate of transmission down.

The measure, which had been proposed by the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, was at first rejected by Johnson, who said that he wanted to avoid the "misery of another national lockdown."

As the single-day rise in new positive tests began to approach 25,000 in the UK, the prime minister on October 31 announced plans to abandon the localized approach in favor of a short-term nationwide lockdown. The proposal gained the overwhelming support of the House of Commons on November 4 and entered into force one day later.

LOCKDOWN TWO MEETS PUBLIC FATIGUE

The first UK-wide lockdown was introduced on March 23 and lasted until the early summer, when a gradual easing of measures took place. While "lockdown two" is scheduled to remain in force in England until December 2, and sees schools and universities remain open unlike in spring, many have expressed feelings of fatigue and apathy towards the social distancing measures.

On the day the second lockdown came into effect, a large protest took place on London's Trafalgar Square that resulted in the arrest of 190 people, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Hundreds of people took part in a similar demonstration in Manchester three days later, and the Greater Manchester Police reported that several officers suffered injuries while responding to an incident at the protest.

"Clearly there is not the same level of the public buying into the second lockdown as there was to the first," Robert Dingwall, professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University and a member of the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, told Sputnik.

Prof. Dingwall said that the likely cause of the recent protests was the public's growing fatigue with social distancing restrictions. However, these individuals may have also become the subject of exploitation by conspiracy groups, the leading sociologist said.

"Personally, I think it's probably mostly the latter [fatigue with lockdown], although I would say there is some evidence of that frustration and fatigue being exploited by people with various attachments to conspiracy groups," Prof. Dingwall stated.

The UK government faced severe criticism after it was revealed in May that the prime minister's top adviser, Dominic Cummings, had flouted the country's lockdown rules in March by driving from London to Durham to stay with his parents after his wife had started displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

At that time, the government implored anyone with symptoms not to leave their home for any reason, and many citizens told UK media outlets that they had missed important events, such as the funerals of family members, in order to abide by these rules.

Despite this, ministers publicly backed Cummings, who remained in his post, and Ian Shaw, a professor of health policy at the University of Nottingham, said that this scandal had a damaging effect on public confidence in the government's COVID-19 response. which may impact the effectiveness of the current lockdown measures.

"This [the success of the lockdown] will depend on the level of public compliance. I think the 'social contract' on 'we are all in this together' was shattered with the Cummings fiasco. I think this four-week period will dampen down infection rates and help the NHS [National Health Service] cope," Prof. Shaw said.

GOVERNMENT FACES CHALLENGE BALANCING EPIDEMIOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC CONCERNS

The United Kingdom, along with the rest of the world, is facing the sustained challenge of trying to curb the coronavirus disease while also protecting the economy from ruin.

According to Prof. Shaw, the government should have allowed for its policy to be subject to greater public scrutiny.

"We should, over the summer, have had a public debate on this, knowing that a second lockdown over the winter was highly likely. However, the government did not politically want to acknowledge this and so the debate/discourse did not happen," the University of Nottingham academic said.

Without this debate, the UK population has been unable to access all the evidence that has informed the government's COVID-19 policy, leading to a decline in public confidence, Prof. Shaw added.

"The public are therefore left with trusting that the government has this decision right having balanced all the evidence - the problem is that trust in the government handling of COVID-19 is diminished and the public don't get to see all the evidence around decisions and how they were arrived at," he said.

According to Nottingham Trent University academic Prof. Dingwall, the evidence available to the UK government that has been used to inform its coronavirus-related policy has often been incomplete or partial.

"The problem, in a sense, has been that the government has had to take policy actions which are based often on partial, limited, and uncertain evidence, and the consequence of that has been, if you like, an uncertainty in policy and difficulty in winning a sufficient degree of political and public consent for many of the measures that have been introduced," Prof. Dingwall remarked.

Any epidemic or pandemic involving a new virus creates challenges for the whole of society, Prof. Dingwall said, adding that governments are often only able to enact their societal interventions until biomedical research has the opportunity to "catch up."

As a result, the implementation of stringent social distancing measures, such as lockdowns, requires careful consideration of a range of issues, not just the immediate epidemiological threat, the leading sociologist said.

"You need a broader scientific input than the UK, and indeed most countries, have been able to mobilize in order to get a coherent body of interventions and to resolve uncertainties about the balance between the benefits of specific interventions and the harms that result from them," Prof. Dingwall remarked.

Throughout the pandemic to date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged governments to take strong measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Nevertheless, in a February report, the WHO-China Joint Mission Team, established to enhance understanding of the evolving pandemic, found that 80 percent of coronavirus-positive individuals displayed mild to moderate symptoms and did not require inpatient care.

Prof. Dingwall said that many governments had formulated their response to the pandemic based on the small proportion of individuals who experience severe health conditions after testing positive for the disease, rather than the majority who are able to recover in a short space of time.

"Much of the policy making has been based on extreme cases. The cases that are getting to hospital, the cases that end up in intensive care, and clearly there is a challenge in the demands on the health system. On the other hand, we've sometimes lost sight of the fact that something around 30 percent of the people who contract this infection will never know they had it unless they've been tested for it," the Nottingham Trent University academic said.

The start of the four-week lockdown in England was accompanied by Chancellor Rishi Sunak's announcement that the government's furlough scheme, which sees the state pay 80 percent of wages up to a maximum of 2,500 Pounds ($3,275) per month for employees unable to work due to the pandemic, until March.

The government also announced an extension of its Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, although the Institute of Fiscal Studies warned on November 3 that as many as 38 percent of self-employed people are ineligible to receive funds via the initiative.

CAN VACCINES BRING AN END TO LOCKDOWN MEASURES?

The UK government, as of September, has placed orders for 380 million doses of candidate vaccines against COVID-19 from pharmaceutical giants such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer. The vaccines are set to be distributed upon the successful completion of clinical trials.

Prime Minister Johnson has, throughout the pandemic, been cautious regarding vaccine developments and their potential to bring the pandemic to an end.

On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech published the first interim analysis of their phase three study, and the pharmaceutical firms said that their vaccine was 90 percent effective in preventing infection within 28 days of inoculation.

Following the announcement, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the Sky news broadcaster that he has asked the NHS to be prepared for the rollout of vaccines from December. However, any mass vaccination program in the UK is unlikely to begin until March, the University of Nottingham's Ian Shaw said.

"I don't think we will have a significant roll out until March, although some vaccinations may start in December once the vaccine is approved. There are huge logistical problems with the need to store and transport at -80�C [-112 degrees Fahrenheit] as well as produce the drugs and then organise a vaccination programme," Prof. Shaw remarked.

The UK government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has already published a priority list with 10 tiers setting out who will be vaccinated and in what order.

Care home residents and staff are to be vaccinated first, followed by those over 80 years of age, the over-75s, over-70s; carrying on in this manner until the over-50s, before the eventual rollout to the general population, according to the committee.

According to Prof. Dingwall, vaccinating these priority groups will take an extensive period of time and use up most of the government's vaccine doses at an early stage.

"It would take about three months to cover the first phase of that if everything went well and that would use up the first tranche of vaccines," he said.

The rollout of vaccines also raises questions over the future of the government's social distancing restrictions.

Johnson has said that "lockdown two" will be replaced by the previous localized measures from December 2, although Prof. Shaw said that social distancing will likely be lifted only once the country's at-risk groups receive a vaccine against the disease.

"Social distancing could be relaxed to a certain extent if the most vulnerable are vaccinated. I think some degree of social distancing will be in place until the vaccine is readily available to anyone on demand which may not be until the end of 2021," the University of Nottingham academic said.

According to Prof. Dingwall, the UK government faces months of difficult discussions to assess the risks and benefits of easing the current social distancing restrictions prior to the mass rollout of vaccines against the coronavirus disease.

As public discontent increases, the government may face a serious challenge in gaining the population's approval should it decide that a third national lockdown is required, the top sociologist said.

"I think if there's a proposal to extend it [the second lockdown] in any serious form or if there's a proposal for a third lockdown in the New Year alongside the rollout of the vaccine, we have to be very cautious about assuming that any significant degree of public consent will be achievable, although a lot of people will go along with it simply in order to keep out of trouble with the police," Prof. Dingwall remarked.

The challenges currently faced by Johnson and his ministers are not unique to the United Kingdom. The second wave of COVID-19 in Europe has prompted many countries to bring back the social distancing measures that were eased over the summer, and violent protests have also been held in Spain, Italy, and Germany, among others.

Vaccines against the coronavirus disease are on the way, but it remains a waiting game to see how long the UK population will have to adhere to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's "stay at home" message.