Half of England set to be placed under highest lockdown tiers

Roughly half of the population of England is set to fall into the two most severe levels of coronavirus restrictions just three days after the tiered system of local lockdowns was introduced.

Boris Johnson brought forward the three tier system of local lockdowns on Monday, with regions in the north of England including the city of Liverpool moving swiftly into a harsher level of restriction to limit the spread of the virus.

Now with a new tranche of regions affected, including parts of York and Essex and the entirety of London, roughly 50 per cent of the country’s population has been placed under a tier two or tier three lockdown - according to a tally conducted by The Independent.

However despite covering half of the nation’s people, the measures apply to a relatively small percentage of the its land mass - with many of the 27.7 million people handed further restrictions living in areas with dense populations.

So far tier three measures - reserved for those places with a “very high” prevalence of the virus - have only been implemented in Merseyside, with officials in Greater Manchester resisting the move until adequate support for business is introduced.

“They are asking us to gamble our residents’ jobs, homes and businesses and a large chunk of our economy on a strategy that their own experts tell them might not work”, the region’s metro mayor Andy Burnham said in a statement. “We would never sign up for that.”

Meanwhile London mayor Sadiq Khan, who has long advocated for stricter measures in the capital, welcomed the move into tier two for the city’s 8.9 million residents.

While confirming he was pushing for additional support from government, he said: “Nobody wants to see more restrictions - but this is deemed to be necessary in order to protect Londoners’ lives by myself, London council leaders and by ministers”.

“Time and again it has been shown that it is better to act earlier than to act too late”, he added in a statement. “I am not willing to put Londoners’ lives at risk and we must do all we can to minimise economic damage.”.