Though it is welcome, England’s newly-announced national lockdown may be a little too late, one Maltese hospital coordinator in the UK has warned.

“The situation is getting worse – we are seeing a great increase in cases, many of them in healthcare staff, and that will impact everything,” John Micallef Moreno, coordinator at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital, told Lovin Malta after the lockdown was announced.

“I was looking forward to Boris Johnson announcing a national lockdown… but it may be a bit too late in some cases,” he continued. “It means less staff to help patients, leading to hospitals not admitting patients anymore… it’s a vicious circle.”

Johnson’s new lockdown comes as a new, more transmissible variant of COVID-19 is spreading across the UK, with Scotland and Wales in similar lockdown scenarios.

Micallef Moreno foresees a rise in COVID-19 cases over the next two weeks before a drop in cases in England.

“My main concern, and the hospital’s, is having less COVID-19 positive staff – it has become a daily increase,” he lamented. 

However, Micallef Moreno was still cautiously optimistic in light of vaccines being rolled out across the UK.

“I think the vaccination will definitely help – I myself have an appointment for my vaccine on Wednesday – so that’s what is hopeful, and soon we will have all our staff vaccinated and then we will see…”

What do you think of England’s new national lockdown?