Council leader’s warning over Christmas gatherings
People should think “carefully” about Christmas gatherings as the relaxed restrictions “will almost certainly lead to an increase in case rates”, Birmingham’s council leader said.
Speaking at a full council meeting yesterday, Birmingham City Council’s leader Councillor Ian Ward also welcomed the likelihood that the five-day period of relaxed lockdown rules will have “uniformity across the UK”.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have backed plans from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to loosen lockdown rules from December 23 to December 27.
The relaxed rules would mean families can meet up with two other households – but Government scientific advisers have warned the period of relaxed rules could lead to “unnecessary deaths” and a third lockdown.
Answering a question from Councillor Jon Hunt, Councillor Ian Ward said: “We need to all consider very carefully what we might do when restrictions are possibly relaxed for five days over Christmas because all of the scientific advice being given to the Government and indeed the scientific advice I have received is indicating that that five days relaxation is almost certainly going to lead to an increase in case rates.”
But he added: “What I do welcome is that efforts have clearly been made that if there is to be a loosening of restrictions over a five day period at Christmas, efforts are now being made to try and get some uniformity across the UK as to what those relaxed restrictions would look like.
“I do think that would be appreciated because that will provide some clarity to everyone.”
Speaking ahead of this morning’s news of UK approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, he said: “The vaccine may well be the longer term solution to the pandemic – indeed I believe the vaccine is the way out of this current situation.
“But a vaccine is not going to help us with the current second wave of the virus here in the UK and the city of Birmingham. In order to deal with that we are all of us going to have to follow the rules and regulations pertaining to Tier 3 which we are going to be placed into.”
Speaking on any possible move out of Tier 3, he said: “We need to see a consistent fall in the case rate in this city before we can move out of Tier 3.
“We also need to see a significant in the case rate for over 60s and we need to see a downturn in the number of people going into hospital.
“All of that is going to take a little bit of time.
“We will see where we are in the two weeks time on December 16 when the Government intends to review which Tier we will be in.
“However, I think we will need to see a significant falls in case rate, falls in positivity rate and falls in the numbers of people going into hospital before we can safely from from Tier 3 into Tier 2.”
