The U.K. capital moves to the country’s tightest COVID-19 restriction regime on Wednesday, after a few weeks showing coronavirus infections rising at an alarming pace, which will add another hit to an economy struggling with the pandemic’s consequences.
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Health secretary Matt Hancock told Parliament on Tuesday that the “sharp, exponential rise” of infections in the greater London area, as well as nearby Kent and Essex necessitated to put the regions under the toughest, tier 3, regime from early on Wednesday.
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Hancock told the House of Commons that a new strain of the virus could be associated with the fast spread in the southeast of the country, but that nothing suggests for now that it is resistant to vaccines or causes more serious diseases.
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The Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday that the unemployment rate rose to 4.9% in the three months ended in October, as the number of redundancies rose to a record 370,000 in the same period.
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The pound was stable against the euro in morning trading, despite the flicker of hope generated by the continuation of talks on a future trade deal between the U.K. and the EU. The U.K.’s currency has fallen by more than 8% against the euro in the last year.
Read: World watches as first person receives Pfizer–BioNTech COVID shot
The outlook: The U.K. became last week the first country to start a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign. But the country’s experience also helps illustrate the struggles facing most Western governments as they try to balance hopes for controlling the disease in the future with tough restrictions in the short term.
The experience of the first lockdown in the first half of the year, and the easing of restrictions that may have been too fast and too broad, leading to the unexpected virulence of the second wave, seems to be repeated in the fall. Germany, Italy and France must now resign themselves to tougher Christmas measures than they hoped for.
Customers rushing to the big European shopping venues, crowded streets, and patrons queuing up to take advantage of holiday sales expectedly led to a jump of infections, just as vaccines were being approved and distributed, leading to complacency about the pandemic’s current strength.
Read: London is latest European city placed in lockdown, as Sweden’s Nordic neighbors offer lifesaving help
