LONDON faces being plunged into Tier 3 next week with the worst Covid rate in the UK.
Officials fear it is now too late to turn the tide before the capital is locked into tighter restrictions, despite the Tier review not scheduled to take place until December 16.
The city was placed into Tier 2 when England exited its national lockdown fortnight ago – but rates of infection have skyrocketed since meaning scores caught the virus during the lockdown.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock spoke of “worrying signs” in London yesterday.
The city has now overtaken the north-east and north-west where most regions are subject to tier three rules.
In the north-west, which had seen the most infections in the UK for a long time, the rate is down to 130 per 100,000 – but London is now at t 177 cases per 100,000 people.
Cases are expected to continue rising as Londoners flock to bars and shops now restrictions have eased.
The PM has promised some Tier 3 areas with low rates they could drop down a tier in next week’s review.
But London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan said plunging into the most extreme tier would be “catastrophic” to businesses already struggling under the Covid pandemic.
The Times reports sources said Tier 3 was “more than likely” if the cases continue to shoot up.
Pessimistic Whitehall sources said even if the rates flatted out, there was “almost certainly” no way Tier 3 could be avoided.
But MPs are expected to push back against the measures hard with cases varying widely from borough to borough.
Insiders are calling for low-infection suburbs to be exempt from the restrictions.
Despite cases in Havering being four times higher than those in Richmond, health chiefs and the Government say the capital needs to be treated as a whole because Londoners travel across boroughs so frequently.
University of East Anglia Professor Paul Hunter said “much of the increase is driven by teenagers,”
He added: “If it is children, then moving up a tier wouldn’t necessarily control that as they are still going to school.”
