SCHOOLS across Worcester will be closed from tomorrow (Tuesday) until after the February half-term after Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed a third national lockdown.
Speaking some six hours after Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon put her country into lockdown, Mr Johnson said we ‘needed to do more together’ to contain the new variant of Covd-19 which is between 50 per cent and 70 per cent more infectious.
As a result, the Prime Minister urged residents to stay at home from midnight tonight and only leave home to shop for essentials, to work if they cannot work from home, to seek medical assistance or to escape domestic abuse.
In an echo of March’s lockdown, the clinically vulnerable will be told to shield and schools across the county will close. The Prime Minister added it would be ‘extremely unfair’ for teenagers to sit GSCE and A-Levels this summer and offered a repeat of the predicted grades given to last summer’s cohort.
Children of key workers will be allowed to attend school while early years setting such as nurseries will remain open.
Speaking to the nation in the last hour, Mr Johnson said the weeks ahead ‘will be the hardest yet’.
“But I really do believe we are entering the last phase of the struggle because with every jab that goes into our arms we are tilting the odds against Covid and in favour of the British people,” he said
“Thanks to the miracle of science, not only is the end in sight but we know exactly how we are going to get there.”
Mr Johnson again offered a timetable of the road ahead and said by the middle of February ‘if things go well’ the government expects to have offered a first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups: all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, everyone over the age of 70 and all frontline health and social care workers.
