BORIS Johnson has warned Britain will soon “feel the effects” of Europe’s third wave of Covid as he vowed to vaccinate population as quickly as possible.
Speaking today on a visit to Preston, the PM said Britain wouldn’t be able to escape the effects on soaring infections on the continent, despite Britain’s vaccine programme going from strength to strength.
But he said he would continue to “bash on with the roadmap we set out” with the “programme we have got” so far despite fears it could delay our own unlocking.
He said today: “On the continent right now you can see sadly there is a third wave underway, and people in this country should be under no illusions.
“Previous experience has taught us that when a wave hits our friends, I’m afraid it washes up on our shores as well, and I expect we will feel those effects in due course.
“That’s why we are getting on with our vaccination programme as fast as we can.
“But a vaccination campaign – these are international projects and they require international cooperation to make things happen.”
The PM said he had repeatedly spoken to EU neighbors and they were all facing similar problems keeping a lid on infections.
It comes as cases are soaring on the continent – and their jabs rollout lags far behind Britain’s.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has urged the Government to take a cautious approach amid the surge in infections on the continent – but has not called for a change to Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown, it was reported at the weekend.
Britain saw a huge rise in cases in late December amid the spread of the Kent variant, which now makes up a significant number of infections in Europe.
Many of Europe’s cases are said to be the Kent variant – and some from South Africa too.
Professor of infectious disease epidemiology Andrew Hayward has warned the UK needs to be “careful” as it releases lockdown measures as the rise in infections across Europe could last “several months”.
He told Times Radio that it was “very worrying” for Europe to be moving into a “third wave” of coronavirus cases with “comparatively low vaccination levels”.
Speaking to the station in a personal capacity, Professor Hayward added: “From what I understand, quite a lot of that is the emergence of the strain that came from the UK, the B117 strain, which is more transmissible, which is the same strain that’s still here now.
“I think it just shows that the lockdown in the UK is necessary and we need to be careful as we release and to watch the figures because this shows the potential for cases to shoot up.
“Obviously it has implications on travel, I think, and what we plan for doing with that, because these waves of infection will tend to last for several months really before they get back down to low levels.
“But unless there’s much travel between the countries it shouldn’t directly impact us.”
At the moment Brits are banned from travelling abroad during the current lockdown.
The stay at home message will be lifted at the end of the month and replaced with a ‘stay local’ order.
But holidays abroad are still up in the air – with ministers not set to make a call on whether they can go ahead until the middle of April.
Any holidays outside the UK will not get the green light until May 17 at the very earliest.
Professor Kamlesh Khunti, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) at the University of Leicester, said he did not believe Brits “should be planning on summer holidays abroad until next year”.
He said: “It’s been a hard lockdown – we are doing so well. We cannot jeopardise this now.
“Our rates are coming down, our vaccination [rate] is fantastic, and the biggest fear we have is new variants that the vaccines don’t work as well against.
“We knew right at the beginning of the pandemic that our border control wasn’t good – we had people coming in from Spain and Italy and that increased the rates in the UK, and in the summer we have more cases come in. We cannot allow that now.
“Does this risk another lockdown? Absolutely”.
Paris has entered a month-long lockdown after the country recorded almost 35,000 cases in a 24-hour period.
Scientists estimate that 5 to 10 per cent of these cases could be the South African variant.
Meanwhile, large swathes of Italy were plunged back into lockdown this week after cases nearly doubled in a month, with all schools and non-essential retail forced to shut.
