‘Indian Variant’ Worries UK Government Advisers
Voice of America
The British government is hoping to vaccinate up to a million people a day in a bid to keep the country on track for a gradual relaxation of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
Officials, however, acknowledge they’re taking a calculated risk going ahead Monday with allowing separate households to socialize indoors and for some international travel to resume. Former and current scientific advisers have voiced concern about keeping to a previously announced roadmap of unlocking, fearful that the coronavirus variant circulating in India, which appears to be also spreading quickly across Britain, may rapidly push up hospitalizations and deaths again. Mark Walport, a former chief scientific adviser and a member of the government’s key advisory panel for emergencies, known as SAGE, warned Sunday the country is at a perilous moment. “My personal judgment is that I will do things outside as far as possible,” he said. “My advice is that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.”Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.