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It was the moment when Rishi Sunak finally lost his battle with Matt Hancock and Michael Gove to avert a crippling second national lockdown.
The all-powerful Covid Quad committee, which has taken all the key strategic decisions during the pandemic, met in the Cabinet Office on Friday amid doomsday predictions from the Government's SAGE committee of scientific advisers.
Yesterday, Johnson was forced to unveil the new lockdown at a hurriedly-arranged press conference yesterday, after sources told the Daily Mail about the plans hours after the Quad committee meeting.
The measures come into force from midnight on Thursday morning until December 2, and close all but essential shops, restaurants, pubs, hairdressers and leisure centres.
The furlough scheme that pays workers 80% of their wages will be extended for a month, and travel outside the UK will be allowed only for 'work'.
Mr Johnson said it was the the only way to avert bleak Sage predictions of 85,000 deaths this winter, which would force doctors to choose between saving Covid sufferers and those with other illnesses.
Boris Johnson will bring in the Army to help roll out 'rapid turnaround tests' which will see 'whole cities' able to tested for Covid within days.
The Prime Minister made the announcement at a Downing Street press conference this evening, as he plunged the nation back into a full lockdown until December 2.
Government scientific advisers have endorsed Mr Johnson's £100billion Operation Moonshot, which would see 10 million people tested a day regardless of whether they have symptoms, in a paper submitted to Downing St last month.
Parisians fleeing for the countryside jammed the roads ahead of France's
lockdown to slow the spread of resurgent coronavirus infections, and there
was only a sprinkling of people hurrying along city sidewalks Friday as the
nationwide restrictions went into effect.
Dystopian images of logjams that stretched for 435 miles (700 kilometers) at
one point Thursday evening — exacerbated by the upcoming long holiday
weekend — were a grim sign of a return to the dark days of the spring, when
virus cases first swelled in Europe and many countries kept their citizens
inside for weeks on end. With infections hitting record levels in some countries,
many are now resorting to severe restrictions again.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13062099/france-lockdown-paris-roads-gridlock-train-stations/
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