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Banbury in COVID-19 Tier 4 from Boxing Day
23/12/2020
Matt Hancock MP announces higher alert level coming into force immediately after Christmas Day
The Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, this afternoon announced that Oxfordshire will move to Tier 4 – the highest COVID-19 tier – from Boxing Day. The county is currently in Tier 2.
Mr Hancock said that COVID-19 cases had risen by 75% over the past week and hospital admissions were at 1,909 today, which is the highest figure since mid-April. He acknowledged that 2020 had been a hard year said it was “ending in this festive period which is going to be very different”.
Oxfordshire is amongst a number of counties which are joining their neighbouring counties in increased tier levels. Mr Hancock justified the restrictions saying: “Just as we have got a tiered system in place, we have discovered a new more contagious virus, a variant which is spreading at a dangerous rate.”
This is a short summary of the rules that will come in from 00.01 on Boxing Day:
- Stay at home – you must not leave or be outside of your home or garden except where you have a ‘reasonable excuse’. A reasonable excuse includes heading to work if you can’t work from home, for essential local shopping, education, for exercise and medical reasons.
- You must not leave the Tier 4 area, other than for legally permitted reasons.
- Trips away from home and holidays in the UK and abroad are not allowed.
The following businesses must close:
- non-essential retail (like clothing and homeware stores, vehicle showrooms, betting shops, tailors, tobacco and vape shops, electronic goods and mobile phone shops)
- cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and social clubs
- hotels, guest houses, leisure and sports facilities and gyms
- theatres, concert halls, cinemas, museums and galleries, and indoor play and soft play centres
- personal care facilities such as hair, beauty, tanning and nail salons.
- community centres and halls.
You can see the full details of the Tier 4 rules on the government’s website.
Ansaf Azhar, Oxfordshire County Council’s Director for Public Health, said: “We are in a very serious situation, which means that people are once again being told to stay at home. The new variant of COVID-19 spreads extremely quickly and these rules are being applied for our own safety and protection. The numbers of cases across the county have risen very steeply and we have also seen sharp rises in hospital admissions.
“When we compare our current situation with that of just a few weeks ago, we can clearly see how quickly things can change and how aggressively the virus can spread if we let our guard down even by a fraction. We have seen during 2020 that this virus thrives on human contact. That seems to be even more the case with the new variant, which is 70% more transmissible and is increasingly becoming the dominant strain across the country.
“Tier 4 is a stark warning that we need to be extra vigilant. Unless we all take personal responsibility as individuals and families throughout the coming weeks, we risk creating a situation in the early weeks of 2021 that will see further steep rises in the number of cases at exactly the time of year when viruses thrive. This means putting even more pressure on our NHS at its busiest time of year.”
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam