Lockdown rules might be relaxed in the UK to allow people to socialize with 10 of their nearest friends and family as the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc across the nation.
The government is looking to ease the strict “stay at home” rules and create small groups, or bubbles, of people in which they can interact with those close to them.
According to the Daily Mail, these bubbles or clusters will consist of households with a maximum size of 10 people who’ll be allowed to freely interact with one another.
The people in the bubbles will not be allowed to socialize with the general public as they could before the lockdown.
Despite the ray of hope for the British population, the Home Secretary Priti Patel has warned that if people keep breaking lockdown rules, the government will have to make the rules stricter.
The potential easing of the lockdown measures is expected to make it possible for families to have meals together, allowing couples who live separately to see each other.
Ministers are reluctant to allow a free-for-all situation as it is feared that it would make the pandemic take hold again and the results will be disastrous.
To take advantage of the relaxation in lockdown rules, Britishers will have to nominate people from one or two households at most. They will be allowed to see only the list of people they nominated.
The authorities are still looking for the easiest and safest ways to ease the stay at home orders.
Recently, the number of people coming out of their houses has increased and road traffic of 10 per cent has been observed.
As of now, the UK rules do not allow people to see anyone they are not living with and only allow going out of the house in case of serious emergency or essential tasks like grocery shopping.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reluctant in allowing any relaxation in lockdown rules because of the potential threat of a second wave even though the cabinet is pressing him to ease the lockdown.
The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, was the first one to allow people to interact with friends and family in “bubbles.”
Minister Sturgeon opined in Good Morning Scotland, a broadcast of BBC Scotland, saying: “Some countries are starting to look at slightly expanding what people would define as their household – encouraging people who live alone to maybe match up with somebody else who is on their own or a couple of other people to have almost kind of bubbles of people.point 403 |
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She continued: “Now, none of these are fixed decisions yet, but these are all the kind of things we’re trying to work through.”
The First Minister acknowledged that strict measures are absolutely necessary but stressed on the point that Scotland needs to learn the way of living with the virus.
Britain currently has 143,464 confirmed cases of the virus and the pandemic has claimed as much as 19,506 lives in the country so far.
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