Sadiq Khan declares a major incident in London over coronavirus

The mayor of London Sadiq Khan has today declared a major incident in the capital as he warned that the spread of coronavirus was now ‘out of control’. Latest figures are showing that just more than 1 per cent of the city’s 9million residents tested positive for Covid last week. 

Mayor Khan is also pointing to figures that show that hospital admissions rose by a quarter in the first week of January. Khan has now penned a letter to Boris Johnson in which he demands that churches and other places of worship are closed and for face masks to be worn routinely outside of the home, including in supermarket queues and any other places that may be crowded.  

He is also calling for more financial support for Londoners who need to self-isolate and are unable to work. However, according to results from the UK’s largest testing scheme, coronavirus cases are already dropping in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics, which tracks the size of the outbreak through random swabs of thousands of people, is suggesting that the capital’s crisis started to reverse on December 29 – a week before the nation’s third national lockdown came into force on the 6th of January.

Mr Khan’s statement today says: ‘The situation in London is now critical with the spread of the virus out of control’. Previously, major incidents were declared in London after the Grenfell Tower disaster, the London Bridge and Westminster terror attacks, and the Croydon tram crash in November 2016.

The Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police Matt Twist has said: ‘I know Londoners will be shocked that officers are still dealing with a small selfish minority who think the rules don’t apply to them by holding house parties, large warehouse raves or other gatherings. These are creating breeding grounds for the much more transmissible variant’.

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