Boris Johnson announces end to Plan B Covid restrictions in England
With just two weeks to go until the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, the city’s authorities have raised growing concerns over the rise in local transmission of Covid-19 cases there.
China — which still operates a “zero Covid” policy — said the capital detected five new cases of the Delta variant on Wednesday, with four of them being employees of a cold storage facility in Fangshan district.
In a bid to prevent further spread, Beijing has ordered checks among all cold-chain firms and have asked residents to avoid unnecessary gatherings.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday that the pandemic is “far from over”, warning about the ongoing spread of the Omicron variant and the threat of newly emergent variants in future.
And the chief executive of NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said that Covid-19 has not “magically disappeared”, adding that British prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to ease restrictions “doesn’t mean a return to normality is…
