MP says local lockdowns ‘make the virus spread worse’ with Sheffield set for new restrictions

Sheffield’s weekly Covid-19 infection rate now stands at 358.2 new cases per 100,000 people, which is up from 120.9 a week earlier and is now the eighth highest in England, only just below Leeds, where a local lockdown is already in force.

Sheffield’s director of public health, Greg Fell, has said a local lockdown for the city could be announced as early as today, Thursday, October 8, while Sheffield MP Louise Haigh has reportedly said she wouldn’t be surprised if local restrictions are put in place this week.

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Much of northern England – including Leeds and Manchester – is already in lockdown, with people from different households banned from mixing in homes or gardens.

But an MP in Sunderland has claimed the lockdown restrictions there may actually be doing more harm than good.

Speaking in Parliament, Sunderland Central MP Julie Elliot claimed constituents are flouting the rules to visit relatives in other houses.

The Sunderland Echo reported how she told fellow MPs: “The reality is that people in the area I represent in the North East in Sunderland are seeing their family members, they’re breaking the rules, they’re going into houses.

“Everyone knows that the virus spreads when people are in small rooms together.

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“These regulations and the regulations in Sunderland which I represent are actually making the virus spread worse, not improving them – because the Government has not listened to local people and the requests of leaders, cross-party leaders, of what the needs of the North East were.

“And the Government’s regulations only work if they take people with them and they’re not taking people with them.

“The police aren’t an army, they can’t possibly stop what is going on. And I have huge sympathy for people going in to see their relatives for all sorts of reasons – I don’t condone them breaking the law but I understand it.”

Her comments came as one leading scientist warned that Covid-19 deaths in England could rise to more than 100 a day within the next couple of weeks.

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Dr Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, sits on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M),which advises the Government.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think we are facing a pretty serious outbreak.

“Deaths are now averaging over 50 a day. I think within the next couple of weeks we could quite well be seeing over 100 a day.

“So, I think we are in a situation where cases are rising and they are going to continue to rise unless something changes.”

The chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard, meanwhile, told BBC Breakfast that the variatin in rules made things confusing.

“I think the variation in rules, what lockdown means in one place to another, I think is really difficult, it is confusing, and I am a great fan of clarity and consistency and messaging,” she said.

But she pleaded with people to follow the rules in areas where local lockdowns have been imposed.