Coronavirus: Pubs, clubs and restaurants forced to close

In a bombshell Downing Street briefing, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the venues to close from last night and not to reopen as he said it was now vital “to push down further on that curve of transmission”.

Camley's Cartoon: UK shuts down as virus pandemic tightens its grip.

Gyms, leisure centres, cinemas, theatres and nightclubs were also forced to suspend operations following the latest advice from the Government’s scientific advisers.

Mr Johnson acknowledged the strain the move would place on businesses and livelihoods, but stressed that the speed of the UK’s economic recovery “depends on our ability to get on top of this virus now”.

• READ MORE: Europe strains under pandemic as global death toll passes 10,000

Speaking at a separate briefing, Scotland’s chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, said advice was ramped up following investigation into coronavirus cases in England, particularly intensive care cases.

It came as Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the Government will pay 80 per cent of wages for employees not working as a result of the outbreak, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month.

The Chancellor said the measure would kick in within weeks, with the scheme fully operational by the end of April.

He also announced the next quarter of VAT payments would be deferred and loans for businesses would be interest-free for 12 months.

Universal Credit will increase by £1,000 a year and be extended to the self-employed at a rate equivalent to statutory sick pay.

The hardline restrictions are intended to drive social contact down to a minimum following concerns that guidance issued on Monday asking the public to avoid crowded places such as pubs and cinemas was being ignored by too many people.

Mr Johnson said: “We are going to defeat this disease with a huge national effort to slow the spread by reducing unnecessary social contact “I know it’s been tough, I know it’s been inconvenient, but these actions we’re all taking together are helping to take the strain off our NHS.

“Bit by bit, day by day, by your actions, your restraint and your sacrifice, we are putting this country in a better and stronger position where we will be able to save literally thousands of lives.

Lives of all ages, of people who don’t deserve to die now, people whose lives can, must and will be saved.

“These steps we are taking are intended to be temporary and I am  confident that in time the UK economy is going to bounce back.

“But we need to push down further on that curve of transmission.”

Takeaways will remain open while restaurants and pubs that serve food will be allowed to operate a take-out service instead, without having to apply for separate licensing.

Mr Johnson said the measures would be reviewed on a monthly basis, as he urged young revellers not to see the announcement as an excuse for a final night out.

He said: “These are places where people come together and indeed the whole purpose in many cases of these businesses is to bring people together. But the sad thing is for now, at least physically, we need to keep people apart.

“I want to stress we will review the situation each month to see if we can relax any of these measures.

“Listening to what I have to say, some people might be tempted to go out tonight and I say to you ‘please don’t’. You may think you’re invincible but there is no guarantee that you’ll get mild symptoms.”

The move came hours after Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin sparked outrage by vowing that his UK pub chain would continue operating “for the duration”, as he insisted supermarkets were now more crowded than drinking spots.

He said: “Pubs are much less crowded. There’s been hardly any transmission of the virus within pubs. And I think it is over the top to shut them.”

However, the clampdown also coincided with a hospital in England becoming the first to declare a “critical incident” due to a surge in patients admitted with Covid-19.

Northwick Park Hospital in London said its intensive care unit was now completely full, amid reports that two other NHS sites in the capital – Queen Elizabeth Hospital and University Hospital Lewisham – were turning away coronavirus patients because they are running out of beds.

Across the UK, 177 people have now died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, with nearly 4,000 now known to have been infected. In Scotland, six people have died and 322 have tested positive, although the true scale of infection is estimated to be in the thousands.

Ms Calderwood said: “In examining those cases and the cases that have arisen from those people, it would seem there is some concern that actually the doubling time of the virus is faster than we thought. What that means is people are infecting more people than we had thought originally, which was two to three.

“It doesn’t seem to be every case, it seems to be the people who have come from Italy and other high risk travel areas. People who have caught the virus here from somebody, it doesn’t seem to have been that they are infecting more people.

“There’s something about multiple people coming from high risk travel areas that seem to have spread to more people than we previously thought.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in a live statement broadcast shortly after Mr Johnson, said the country faced “difficult days ahead”.

Ms Sturgeon told older Scots that they were being asked to stay away from their grandchildren “for your own protection, so that you can stay around and see them grow up”.

• READ MORE: Pub closures after virus transferring to more people than previously thought

She said: “We are entering stormy waters and I can’t tell you yet when we will reach dry land.” She added the latest draconian measures would save lives and “give our NHS the best chance of coping”.

NHS Scotland is seeking to increase the number of acute hospital beds from around 13000 to 16000, to double intensive care beds to 380, and massively increase the supply of ventilators.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said yesterday that engineering companies had come up with an emergency ventilator prototype to treat coronavirus patients that could be approved for use in UK hospitals by the end of next week.

“More than half a dozen companies have already made one in prototype, to check with us that we are happy with the quality,” he said.

“I would be surprised if it was longer than then. We need as many as you can possibly make and we will buy them.”

Meanwhile it emerged scientists advising the Government have recommended that social distancing measures designed to control the spread of coronavirus will need to be in place for the best part of a year.

The forecast blows a hole in claims by the Prime Minister on Thursday that Britain could “turn the tide” on the virus within 12 weeks, although last night he continued to insist a three month turnaround could be achieved through “testing new medicines” and using digital technology to track the virus.

The papers from the Government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group On Modelling conclude social distancing measures could be eased at times, but that strict enforcement such as bans on mass gatherings would have  to be in place for at least half the year to protect the NHS.

It raises the prospect that people aged over 70, pregnant women, and those with underlying health conditions for which they receive the flu jag could be expected to self-isolate at home into 2021.

The SPIGM papers, published yesterday, stated: “It was agreed a policy of alternating between periods of more and less strict social distancing measures could plausibly be effective at keeping the number of critical care cases within capacity.

“These would need to be in place for at least most of a year. Under such a policy, at least half of the year would be spent under the stricter social distancing measures.”

It came as Italy experienced its largest daily rise in coronavirus deaths, up 627, while researchers predict the number of new intensive care admissions could “flatten out” in April.

The analysis by Professor Davide Manca for the European Society of Anaesthesiology found the “maximum speed of increase” appeared to have been reached in Lombardy on March 11, and in Italy as a whole on March 14.

It should plateau in the “first few days of April”, he said, depending “on how effective Italy’s quarantine measures are in these next two weeks”.

He said:”If other countries want to have enough intensive care beds to treat all the Covid-19 patients that are going to be arriving in their hospitals, they have to decrease the peak of the tsunami of cases that are coming.

“The most effective way to do this is to follow and enforce Italy’s very strict quarantine and social distancing measures, and make sure they are implemented.”

In Germany, the state of Bavaria is banning its citizens from going outside for two weeks from today in the country’s first coronavirus lockdown.