Is the government’s Covid toolkit enough to avoid a winter lockdown?

Boris Johnson is said to be “dead set” against future lockdowns as he announces his Covid-19 winter plan - but ministers have admitted that the option will remain as a “last resort”.

In the House of Commons today, Health Secretary Sajid Javid unveiled a third booster jab programme for the over-50s and the most at risk, a day after the government gave the go-ahead for children aged 12 to 15 to receive single doses of a Covid jab.

The prime minister, who is holding a press conference this afternoon, has said that the “phenomenal vaccine programme, new treatments and testing” meant the UK was “able to live with the virus without significant restrictions on our freedoms”. However, The Telegraph noted that the legislation under which lockdowns were legally enforced “will remain on the statute book”.

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After three national lockdowns, the PM is said to be “adament” that such a blunt instrument should no longer be used to stop the spread, the newspaper reported.

But “Johnson and his cabinet ministers are unlikely to categorically rule out ever adopting a lockdown again, accepting the uncertainty inherent when tackling Covid”.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News today that another lockdown would be an “absolutely last resort”, amid growing hopes that that the vaccination programme will shift Covid from a pandemic to an endemic status.

“Lockdowns were our only tool, that is no longer true,” said Zahawi, who pointed to the Covid booster and flu vaccination programmes, test and trace system, and coronavirus variant surveillance system. The public had also followed public health advice “really, really diligently, which has allowed us to take steps forward, to reopen our economy”, he added.

Yet despite this “impressive toolkit”, said The Times, “18 grim months leaves us still wondering whether we will have to return to the first tool we used: the hammer of lockdown”.

What metric would be used to decide when the “last resort” option might be needed remains unclear.

A senior government scientist told the i news site last week that ministers had contingency plans for an October “firebreak” lockdown should hospitalisations continue at their current level. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has since insisted that “I don’t think that’s something we need to consider”.

But as the site noted, “when Mr Johnson announced the UK’s second lockdown on 31 October last year, there were 16,479 Covid infections and 1,461 hospitalisations”. According to latest government figures, a total of 30,825 daily new infections were recorded yesterday, while hospital admissions, last updated on 7 September, stood at 1,076.

However, the number of deaths within 28 days of a positive test was 61, compared with 320 on 31 October 2020.

As we head into winter, “things will probably get worse”, warned Unherd’s science editor Tom Chivers. “Yet there remains a relatively carefree air.”

One reason “why we’re not all freaking out” is that “we’re tired and bored and aren’t really paying attention”, he wrote. But another is that “the vaccines work, really quite well”.

This time around, “the numbers of cases, and hospitalisations, and deaths, have crept up rather than shot up”, Chivers continued. But if the rate of Covid cases “carries on as it is, then we’ll have 250 or so deaths a day by the middle of November, and the NHS under severe pressure”.

The BBC’s health correspondent Nick Triggle also noted that while big surges in infection levels may be behind us, “if current levels are sustained throughout winter, the NHS will struggle”. And “that will certainly be the case if other respiratory illnesses bounce back like experts fear”, he wrote.

The previous national lockdowns “crushed norovirus, RSV and influenza”, added The Times, but “today they are resurgent”.

While a total lockdown remains unlikely, concluded the newspaper, “don’t bet against a Downing Street press conference where, once again, Johnson addresses the nation and calls for us to cancel office Christmas parties and work from home if we can”.