Boris Johnson 'Right to Loosen England’s Coronavirus Lockdown', Political Commentator Says

© REUTERS / ANDREW PARSONS/10 DOWNING STREETBritain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a daily news conference to update on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain April 30, 2020
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a daily news conference to update on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain April 30, 2020 - Sputnik International
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England’s Coronavirus lockdown has officially been eased today. Workers who cannot perform their tasks from home have now been encouraged to return to action, and the public are now able to spend more time outside, as long as social distancing is maintained.

But has the messaging from Westminster been clear enough? Political Commentator Mandy Boylett gave her views on the matter.

Sputnik: Is Westminster right to begin loosening the UK’s Coronavirus lockdown?

Mandy Boylett: I think Boris Johnson is right to loosen the lockdown, because the devastation to the economy, and also the collateral damage to people’s health is too great, and I think that it is a very difficult balancing act, but I would have been tempted to release the lockdown further.

Sputnik: Has the messaging from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson regarding what the public can and can’t do once the Coronavirus lockdown is relaxed, clear enough?

Mandy Boylett: I think what he said is clear, but I think that it doesn’t make any sense. The fact that you can stay two metres apart from strangers in the park, but not your own family, the fact that you can have cleaners in your home, but not your own family, there are a lot of mixed messages there.

We need the police to be sensible as well. Say if my husband and I wanted to go and see a family member and go out exercising and stay two metres apart; to my mind that would be fine, but the police could say “both of you are out”, it should be just the husband or the wife, but that doesn’t make any sense because if one catches something, the other one would, so when messages like that don’t make any sense, then people are not likely to follow them.

Sputnik: Could the British Government have done more to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus within the UK?

Mandy Boylett: With the benefit of hindsight; there are a few things that I think they could have done. Instead of introducing the fourteen day quarantine now, they should have done it right at the start before there were any Coronavirus infections within the UK.

If after that any cases did emerge; and you were testing them and then tracing them, then that would have really helped, but instead they were letting people come directly from Wuhan and Italy, straight through the airports with no checks.

The other thing that they could have handled better are the care homes. The elderly patients were cleared out of the hospitals to make room in the hospitals for the influx of Coronavirus patients that were being expected, but these elderly people were being sent to care homes, they were not being tested for Coronavirus, and the consequence of that was the massive infection rate in care homes.

That could have been avoided, if the care homes had just closed their doors at the start; then they would not have had many infected patients, and it would never have happened, so those to me are the two things that went really badly wrong at the start.

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