Brighton and Hove will be placed into Tier 2 when it comes out of lockdown on Wednesday.
Other than a spike in mid-November, cases have been plummeting in the city over the last month, and are now among the lowest in the country.
However, the rate is still too high for it to be placed in the lowest Tier 1, and along with most of the rest of the country, it is going to be put into the middle tier, also known as high alert.
This means no socialising with anyone outside your household inside at all – and only up to six people at a time outside, including private gardens.
Pubs and bars must serve a substantial meal to remain open, with table service only. Orders must stop being taken at 10pm, ahead of an 11pm closure.
Other venues such as casinos, museums and bingo halls, must also close at 11, although theatres, cinemas and concert halls can stay open longer for performances starting before 10pm to finish.
Public attendance at inside and outside events, including sport, is capped at 2,000 or 50% of a venue’s capacity, whichever is lower.
Organised outdoor sport can continue, and indoor sport and exercise only if people can avoid mixing.
Full details can be found here.
Brighton’s neighbouring areas East and West Sussex are also in Tier 2. Save for the Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly and Cornwall, the rest of England is all in either Tier 2 or Tier 3.
Addressing the House of Commons today, Health secretary Matt Hancock said the decision as to which tier to place an area was based not just on rates, but also how cases are rising or falling and the current and projected pressure on the NHS.
The official rationale for the whole of Sussex being in Tier 2 is: “Case rates in Sussex are at 120 per 100,000 with a total positivity of 4.5%.
“However, the trend is increasing in several areas.
“NHS admissions have been fairly stable in the last month but there is increasing occupancy in units treating more serious cases.”
They will be reviewed again in a fortnight, and regularly after that.
He said: “We must all think of our own responsibility to keep the virus under control.
“We should see these restrictions not as a boundary to push and not as a limit to what the public health advice says we can safely in any area.
“But frankly, the less any one person passes on the disease, the faster we can get this disease under control together. And that is on all of us.”
Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle tweeted: “We must not spend a moment longer in tier two than we have to.
“People in our city and towns have done so well in slowing the spread of the virus. We need to keep going.”
Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas said: “I know this will be difficult for so many, but I also know that community spirit in our city makes extraordinary things possible
“I’ll continue to do all I can to press Government to give greater support to struggling businesses, particularly in vital hospitality sector.”
I continue to puzzle that all this will be “relaxed” for Christmas as if the virus will put its feet up for a few days rather than come down the chimney on Santa’s shoulders (let’s hope that reindeer are not as afflicted as bats).
Meanwhile, pubs will, in effect, be closed although several bags of peanuts could become a topic for bar-stool discussion as being the equivalent of a “substantial meal”, I suppose. There is, though, so much one can enjoy at home – books, films, music – at modest or no cost. It is worth sitting it out for a better time next year rather than fomenting a resurgence here and now.
I think to read Proust in French. That will keep me going some while. He was surely the patron saint of Lockdown – and I think that to read him in French will also be a good, continuing protest against the foolish brexit into which all this will run in a few weeks’ time.
If I may say, Christopher, you should be puzzling MORE over Caroline Lucas’s slavish adherance to BORIS JOHNSTON and his TORY ‘lack of Governments’s’ diktat on the Covid ‘crisis.’
Come to that, the same goes for our other MPs, Labour’s Peter Kyle and Momentum’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the former of whom I earlier heard expressing his “Broad support” on Radio Sussex for the City going into Tier 2 measures—SOME OPPOSITION!
Meanwile, Tory MPs up and down the country are standing up for the hospitality indrustries in their constituencies by promising to vote against their OWN Prime Minister’s ridiculous proprosals—what a crazy, mixed-up world we inhabit when it comes to politics, don’t we, Christopher?
Perhaps I should be rejoicing at the main parties gleefully getting into bed together for at least it will prove conclusively to the electorate that THEY’RE ALL THE BL**DY SAME!