The UK government will change the policy to enforce the local lockdown in Leicester because its COVID-19 infection rate is getting higher than anywhere else in the country. The lockdown would be enforced by the police, and some retail is no longer open this time.
Leicester has an infection rate of 135 per 100,000 people, which is three times higher than the next highest local area. As Leicester becomes the first area in Britain to be subject to local lockdown measures:
- All non-essential shops will close from today, with the law to be rushed through to underpin the new restrictions, after 800-plus cases were recorded in Leicester since mid-June and the area accounted for around 10 percent of all positive tests in the UK over the past week;
- Schools will close from Thursday and will not reopen until next term, amid fears an unusually high incidence in children is driving the spread. They will stay open for vulnerable children and offspring of key workers;
- People are advised to avoid all but essential travel to, from, and within Leicester and should ‘stay at home as much as you can’, but there is no formal travel ban at this stage;
- Easing of lockdown in England on Saturday will not apply in Leicester, meaning pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas will stay shut;
- Shielding measures will not be loosened in the city on 6 July, unlike the rest of England where the most clinically-vulnerable will be able to spend more time outside.