People living in an east London borough have been told not to mix with other households unless ‘absolutely necessary’, as a second wave of coronavirus hits the country.
Residents in Tower Hamlets have been asked to do everything in their ‘power to protect each other’ after the capital was put on the national watch list last week.
Mayor John Biggs has written an open letter warning the borough has one of the highest number of cases in the city.
He said: ‘With this in mind, now is the time we must take further action. I am clear that the current national rules are a minimum and my advice to you all is to do everything in your power to protect each other. Our individual actions have consequences for us all.
‘The next few months will be very challenging. Without a vaccine or more effective treatment, our primary weapon against the virus is responsible behaviour. Measures to curb the spread of the virus will only work if people follow them.’
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According to government data, Tower Hamlets has a weekly incidence rate of 46.3 per 100,000 people with 1,438 total recorded cases. This means the borough has the third-highest Covid-19 rate in London.
While ‘diverse communities’ in Tower Hamlets ‘make the borough great’, this does mean that many residents are more vulnerable to coronavirus, Mayor Biggs said.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said he thinks of the capital ‘as one city’ when it comes to the pandemic – but some MPs believe imposing blanket restrictions on the whole of London would be unnecessary as different boroughs are likely to peak at different times.
Harrow East MP Bob Blackman: ‘What happens if east London has a high rate of infections one month, and west London has a high rate a month later when east London has come down? If you lock down the entire capital then it could stay locked down for longer than necessary.
‘It does not make sense to treat a city of eight million people as being all the same, or to restrict the movements of all of those people. It should be done on a borough by borough basis.’
A spokesman for Sadiq Khan said: ‘The Mayor, London leaders and public health advisers met yesterday afternoon to discuss the spread of coronavirus in the capital, with some boroughs seeing much higher incidences of the virus than others.
‘The meeting agreed to monitor the situation very closely over the coming days and to continue to move forward and tackle the virus together as one city.’
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