Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation’s coronavirus envoy for Europe, stressed that the risk of a surge in Covid infections in the capital was now “extremely serious”.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, he appealed to millions of Londoners not to “bend the rules” on social distancing and good hygiene with another heatwave on the way. He also emphasised that the “toughest time” to control the virus is when numbers are low because people often struggle to maintain discipline in combating it.
Dr Nabarro issued the warnings as figures showed the number of confirmed new cases and infection rate going up slightly in 22 borough areas.
Hackney and City of London saw 59 new cases in the seven days to July 30, a rate of 20.5 per 100,000, compared with 43 the previous week and a rate of 14.9. Barking and Dagenham saw its number of new cases nearly treble from 11 to 29, with the rate up from 5.2 to 13.7.
Barnet, Brent, Kensington and Chelsea, as well as Hammersmith and Fulham, all saw their rates go up to at least seven, with the number of new cases in the week to July 30 being between 30 (Barnet) and 11 (K&C), according to the analysis by Press Association of Public Health England figures.
Other boroughs with new cases nudging up, often from a low base, include Harrow, Lambeth, Westminster where the number of new cases doubled from eight to 17, Redbridge, Hounslow, Lewisham, Newham, Wandsworth, Greenwich, Enfield, Richmond, Hillingdon, Camden, Croydon, Waltham Forest and Bromley.
Dr Nabarro said: “It really is a critical time now for us to be treating this virus with the upmost respect.
“I’m not somebody who wants us to continue with lockdown, I want us not to have to continue with working from home, we need to be able as a society to be able to go to work, and also frankly to socialise.
London during Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures
“So the whole approach I’m taking is one of saying ‘let’s come back to a normal working life but remember that it’s not normal as we knew it eight months ago, this is a new reality of living with the constant threat of this virus... it’s establishing a new way of behaviour that is compatible with holding the virus at bay’.”
In other developments today:
- Business minister Nadhim Zahawi did not rule out London being put into lockdown inside the M25 if there is a spike in cases. He played down reports that there could be nationwide age-related measures, with stricter lockdown for the over-fifties, as “speculation” and“inaccurate”, highlighting how the focus had been on local action. On people returning to work, he told BBC Breakfast: “We want the economy to restart, we want employers to act responsibly, to discuss with their workers how they will want to move forward with their business. That’s the right thing to do but that does not take away from someone’s absolute right if they feel uncomfortable to say to their employer ‘look, I don’t feel comfortable coming back to work’.
- Mayor Sadiq Khan and the head of London Councils wrote to Boris Johnson asking why they had not been involved in a reported critical exercise last week in which a major resurgence in Covid-19 infections in the capital was said to have been a central scenario considered, with the M25 possibly being used as a quarantine ring. At the start of the first week since the “work from home if possible” guidance was ditched, Mr Khan warned: “It’s now absolutely vital everyone adheres to the rules on wearing face coverings and follows the guidelines on social distancing and proper hand hygiene.”
- Covid hotspots saw far higher infection rates than in London, at 79.9 for Blackburn with Darwen, Oldham on 62.8, Bradford 53.4. In Greater Manchester, a major incident has been declared after a spike in cases.
- Ministers announced that two new tests for coronavirus and flu, which can return results in just 90 minutes, are to be deployed in hospitals and care homes from next week. But the Government came under fire over delays to testing all residents and staff in care homes.
Asked what the risk was of a second Covid wave in the capital, Dr Nabarro, co-director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, said: “Extremely serious... it’s what I call resurgence because the virus has not gone away.”
He continued: “People want to bend the rules but the virus does not get bored... nobody should bend the rules... we stick to them so we get on top of this virus.”