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New stricter lockdown rules are being imposed on parts of the North of England from midnight tonight it has been announced. Health Secretary revealed the plans on Thursday night, addressing media and explaining the reasons for the local lockdowns.
Speaking to the media, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “We’re constantly vigilant and we’ve been looking at the data and unfortunately we’ve seen across parts of Northern England an increase in the number of cases of coronavirus.
“So today I held a meeting of the Government’s Gold Committee and working with local leaders including for instance Andy Burnham the mayor of Greater Manchester, we’ve decided that we need to action across Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire.
“So from midnight tonight (Friday) we are banning households meeting up indoors.”
Matt Hancock said “households gathering and not abiding by the social distancing rules” was a reason for the stricter rules.
He told the media: “We take this action with a heavy heart but unfortunately it’s necessary because we’ve seen that households meeting up and a lack of social distancing is one of the causes of this rising rate of coronavirus and we’ll do whatever is necessary to keep the country safe.”
Where is facing new local lockdown rules?
So far all that has been said is Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire are facing local lockdowns, unable to meet with people inside homes for the foreseeable future.
Express.co.uk will update this page when more information is available.
This comes as Thursday’s update of the rolling seven-day rate of new cases of COVID-19 for every local authority in England showed an uptick in cases.
In Blackburn with Darwen, the rate has risen from 83.3 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to July 20 to 89.3 in the seven days to July 27. A total of 133 new cases have been recorded.
Leicester is in second place, where the seven-day rate has fallen from 67.8 to 60.2, with 214 new cases.
Other areas reporting notable week-on-week jumps include:
– Oldham (up from 23.3 to 54.3, with 128 new cases)
– Pendle (up from 27.4 to 42.7, with 39 new cases)
– Trafford (up from 15.2 to 41.0, with 97 new cases)
– Calderdale (up from 20.9 to 33.8, with 71 new cases)
– Swindon (up from 9.0 to 28.8, with 64 new cases)
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