[nffc]

IMHO now - or indeed before Christmas - isn't the time to make any more restrictions.


First of all, people won't want to have Christmas ruined, yesterday was the last day you could catch covid and not have to isolate for Christmas, so you'd expect a lot of people would start limiting their contacts if they're bothered about that.


The booster roll out, which is the answer, is possible - anyone can now book (if the NHS site will let them) and go to a walk in centre, the more boosters given out the harder it is for the virus to spread anyway.


Plan B measures aren't the answer, if they want to stop it they won't go hard enough, but given some people have to work and people still have to shop even a lockdown might not slow it down enough. But they will help. Office workers not having to go into the office will limit their contacts especially if they have to use PT to get there, passports probably won't do a lot, masks probably won't do a great deal either, but both will probably still help slow it down. And we will need to see this in for a week at the least to see if there is an effect or not.



Short of introducing further curbs on hospitality - which will probably suffer anyway as people elect not to go - such as distancing tables, table service or indeed closing it, or other indoor mixing such as rule of 6 (which is incredibly difficult to enforce and would be a bit of an own goal given the backlash to the party measures) there aren't much more options he can go down anyway.



If the focus has - as it should be - not shifted from the healthcare situation, then this is pretty stable. According to the data site, all three measures have fluctuated to a minor degree but in general have remained level since about the middle of July. We are potentially now around the time where you would see Omicron infections presenting to hospital (if they are going to) which doesn't yet appear to be causing a serious surge, but we don't know that isn't going to happen yet, and it's one of those things where if it does happen it happens before you notice it. So they are entirely right to say there is a risk because they don't know there isn't yet and slow things down for now. This needs time to work, and won't work as well as going full on it (the best thing right now to stop the virus would be to order a 2 week lockdown - but this will have other effects, and anyway hasn't always worked in other cases) so the current compromise seems to make sense.


They will be pushing the boosters because it's the only real way out of it. Restrictions ultimately have to come off quickly as they can and if they do before enough have been boosted then they will just get a spike in infections again. Of course, they do need to work on their side too (there aren't currently any walk in centres in Notts offering boosters) in regards to the capacity and availability but this is probably still being looked into. It strikes me he announced all of that before a lot of the work had been finished.