Regional leader Dan Jarvis claims that a £41 million support package has been agreed with the government. The tough new measures will be effective from midnight on Friday.
Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, Housing Minister Robert Jenrick stated that the situation in the northern county of South Yorkshire was very serious and that action needed to be taken in moving the region into the top lockdown tier.
The Covid-19 infection rate in Sheffield, South Yorkshire’s main city, was reported on Sunday as 371 cases per 100,000 people, a fall on the previous week. However, the health service is seeing an increasing number of people hospitalized.
South Yorkshire becomes the fourth region in England to be plunged into a tier-three lockdown, following Liverpool and Merseyside, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester. The move will see pubs, bars, casinos, and gyms shut along with a ban on socializing indoors and further tough restrictions on household mixing.
London’s discussions with South Yorkshire over a tier-three lockdown appear to have been less troubled than those with Greater Manchester.
The mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, had opposed a local lockdown unless the government provided more resources and financial support to cover the economic costs of the restrictions.
On Tuesday, PM Boris Johnson announced that negotiations had failed with Manchester leaders and that he would impose a local lockdown on his terms. The mayor of Manchester was subsequently accused of “playing politics” with the pandemic as his strategy failed.
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