Leicester lockdown shows the system is working

It is easy to become disheartened by the latest imposition of a tough local local lockdown. Covid-19 is still out there and the restrictions on Leicester are a reminder that Britain’s emergence from the crisis is not going to be straightforward. But the move does suggest that the authorities are becoming more skilled at getting on top of outbreaks early.

The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced that severe lockdown restrictions are being re-imposed on the city of Leicester following a local spike in cases. In a speech to the Commons yesterday evening, he said:

“We cannot recommend that the easing of the national lockdown, set to take place on the July 4, happens in Leicester. Having taken clinical advice on the actions necessary, and discussed them with the local team in Leicester and Leicestershire, we’ve made some difficult but important decisions. We’ve decided that from tomorrow non-essential retail will have to close.

“As children have been particularly impacted by this outbreak, schools will also need to close from Thursday – staying open for vulnerable children and children of critical workers as they did throughout. Unfortunately, the clinical advice is that the relaxation of shielding measures due on 6th July cannot now take place in Leicester.

“We recommend to people in Leicester, stay at home as much as you can, and we recommend against all but essential travel to, from, and within Leicester. We’ll monitor closely adherence to social distancing rules and will take further steps if that’s what is necessary.”

It was a statement familiar in tone, echoing the message delivered to the nation during the first stage of national lockdown, but this time the government should be much better prepared to tackle the outbreak swiftly and efficiently.

Whitehall has been able to watch and learn from other governments taking on local outbreaks as they wound down national lockdown measures. The German government, for instance, recently tackled an outbreak in North Rhine-Westphalia that originated in a food processing plant. Some evidence suggests that the Leicester outbreak originated in similar circumstances.

The speed with which the Department for Health responded suggests that some of those lessons have been learnt. Four mobile testing units and thousands of home testing kits were deployed after an uptick was reported early last week. It then took two days for the government to decide upon re-imposing lockdown restrictions.

In these efforts Britain has a comparative advantage over most of its European counterparts. First, we are now testing on a much larger scale per capita than almost every country on the continent, with a daily capacity of around 250,000 tests. This usually leaves a spare capacity of 50-100,000 test per day, allowing hundreds of thousands of tests urgently deployed to a concentrated area without diverting critical resources from the national effort. The government is capable of running a comprehensive national testing regime and an extensive emergency local testing regime at the same time.

Secondly, the centralisation of testing under Public Health England – which was seen as cumbersome at the start of the crisis –  allows local data to be fed into a national tracking system more accurately and at a much faster rate than in countries where there are numerous private companies running separate testing regimes.

While problems remain with “Test, Track and Trace,” primarily with home testing kits and the flawed mobile app, it managed to catch the Leicester outbreak before it substantially affected hospital capacity.

Until there is a vaccine or a clinical solution, governments will have to rely on tracking down and stamping out small outbursts to avoid a second national epidemic. As the Prime Minister said in his infrastructure speech today in Dudley: “The virus is out there, still circling, like a shark in the water.”