London
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned the country on Saturday of a second wave of the Coronavirus, hinting that another lockdown across the country would be imminent. “There’s no question, as I’ve said for several weeks now, that we could expect and are now seeing a second wave coming in,” said Johnson as he toured the site of a new vaccines centre in Didcot, near Oxford. “We are seeing it in France, in Spain, across Europe — it has been absolutely, I’m afraid, inevitable we were going to see it in this country.” His gloomy announcement came as government scientific advisors said the R number, representing the number of people an infected person will pass the virus to, has risen to between 1.1 and 1.4, up from 1.0 to 1.2 last week. “This is undoubtedly concerning,” said Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University. “Even at growth rates within the estimated range, the number of new cases could grow to high levels quickly if the interventions are not sufficiently effective.”— Agencies