Pressure builds on UK’s Johnson as Covid cases surge

Bloomberg

Two of Boris Johnson’s senior ministers laid bare the competing pressures facing the UK government as it attempts to drag the economy out of its worst recession in at least a century without triggering a new wave of coronavirus infections.
Hours after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab reiterated the government’s push to “get people back to work” and lamented the damage done by locking down the economy, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that a recent spike in coronavirus cases among young people could “lead to the sort of problems that we saw earlier in the year.”
The surge risks undermining the government’s push to encourage people back to their workplaces after schools reopened across England. But it’s also a sign of how the next couple of months threaten to play out for Johnson’s administration, amid warnings from medical officials about a potential resurgence of Covid-19.
On Monday, Environment Secretary George Eustice said the government wants to avoid a second national lockdown
“at all costs” — but wouldn’t rule one out.
“What we’ve developed since the original lockdown is much more targeted local lockdowns,” Eustice told Sky News.
“The idea of going into a total national lockdown again is something we don’t want to do. The impacts on our economy are significant.”
The UK reported 2,988 new coronavirus cases on September 06, a 64% jump from the previous day and the highest level since May 22. That was despite the number of new cases typically dipping on the weekends when reporting is more limited — the average was about 1,600 new cases a day in the past week.
“The cases are predominantly among younger people, but we have seen in other countries across the world and in Europe this sort of rise in the cases among younger people lead to a rise across the population as a whole,” Hancock said.
Johnson has pledged that any measures to kick-start the economy must be “Covid-secure,” so the sudden increase is likely to trigger further pushback from labor unions and workers over pressure to return to the workplace.
But a report by accountancy firm PwC published showed the annual economic cost to the UK from people working remotely could be 15.3 billion pounds ($20.2 billion) due to lower spending from workers who are at home, and the knock-on impact on those who rely on them for business.
The threat of a no-deal Brexit could saddle Johnson’s government with an added challenge in turning the economy around. Carmakers, for example, have warned that the burden of higher tariffs or border disruptions would make British plants less competitive.
Johnson is also facing calls from members of his Conservative Party to explain how the government will pay for various stimulus measures introduced during the pandemic.