UK reimposes lockdown on coronavirus-hit city of Leicester
- New infections in the city of some 340,000 people made up 10 per cent of all cases in England in the last week
- Businesses will close in the city starting Tuesday, with schools following suit in the coming week
Britain on Monday reimposed lockdown measures on a city hit by an outbreak of coronavirus, in the first big test of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “whack-a-mole” strategy to control the disease while getting the economy moving again.
Ministers ordered schools and non-essential shops to be closed and postponed the planned reopening of pubs in the central English city of Leicester after an alarming spike in cases of Covid-19.
Britain has suffered the deadliest outbreak of the virus in Europe, with more than 43,000 deaths, but Johnson last month began easing nationwide stay-at-home orders imposed in late March.
Amid warnings he was moving too fast, with infection and death rates falling but slowly, he vowed to clamp down on local outbreaks like the game “whack-a-mole”.
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Virus-hit hospitals and factories have been shut so far but the measures in Leicester, with a population of 340,000, is the first move to restore lockdown on such a large scale.