LONDON - Roughly half of England is now under tougher coronavirus restrictions, after the government on Thursday announced more stringent measures for London and seven other areas to try to cut surging numbers of cases.
"Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region and Lancashire are being set up as the canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy," he told reporters.Some nine million residents will be affected in London, and more than two million others in parts of the southeast, the Midlands, north, and northwest.
Instead, he favours a targeted, local three-tier alert system based on infection rates, which are not evenly spread across the country. Britain is tracking its European neighbours with a second wave of infection but Johnson has so far resisted imposing another national lockdown.
New World Order at work