Fresh restrictions on social gatherings in England appear to be on the cards as the British government seeks to suppress a sharp spike in new coronavirus infections.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Friday that the country has to “come together” over the coming weeks to get on top of the spike. He said the new transmissions are largely taking place in social settings and are already leading to a doubling in the number of people being hospitalised with the virus every seven to eight days.

“We want to avoid a national lockdown altogether, that is the last line of defense,” he told BBC radio. “It’s not the proposal that’s on the table.”

Following days of criticism over its testing strategy, there is mounting speculation that the government will announce fresh curbs on the hospitality sector, such as pubs and restaurants, potentially involving curfews — something that has already been put in place in areas under local lockdown restrictions, reports AP.

According to the BBC, the British government's chief scientific adviser and medical officer have warned of another serious coronavirus outbreak and many more deaths by the end of October if there were no further interventions soon.

Possible measures being considered under this so-called “circuit break” are asking some hospitality businesses to close, or limiting opening hours, for a period — potentially two weeks.

The testing that is being conducted has already seen a sharp increase in cases over the past couple of weeks that have raised fears that the country with Europe's deadliest coronavirus outbreak may be in for a second wave during the winter.

Critics say it has lost control of the virus and that’s why new measures are being introduced.

Already this week, a ban on social gatherings of more than six people, including children, has come into effect for England. The other nations of the UK — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — have announced similar clampdowns on meetings. And there are several areas across the UK that are living under localised restrictions.

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Tougher restrictions on people and businesses were also announced Friday for parts of the northwest of England, the West Midlands and west Yorkshire. And in a sign that the virus is here to stay through the winter, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, cancelled the annual fireworks display on the River Thames.

‘Doing everything possible’

The latest daily figures show that another 3,395 new confirmed cases were reported. That down on the previous day’s 3,991, the seven-day average is around double the level a couple of weeks back.

As the experience of the pandemic has shown, there's usually a lag of a week or two between a rise in cases and hospitalisations and then a subsequent lag for deaths.

It's clear that the increase in cases is leading to a higher number of people requiring acute care. The number of patients being treated for the disease in hospitals in England increased to 894 on Wednesday, up from 472 on Sept 1, according to the latest government statistics. The number of hospitalised patients on ventilators rose to 107 from 59 in the same period.

The worry is that deaths will start to increase markedly in the days and weeks ahead. Though the UK is recording far fewer deaths on a daily basis than it did earlier this year, it still registered another 21 on Thursday, taking the total of those having died 28 days after testing positive for COVID-10 to 41,705.

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“This is a big moment for the country," Hancock said. “We are seeing an acceleration in the number of cases and we are also seeing that the number of people hospitalised with coronavirus is doubling every eight days.”

The government's strategy over the coming weeks, he said, is to contain the virus down as much as is possible whilst ensuring schools and workplaces remain open.

"And doing everything we possibly can for the cavalry that’s on the horizon of the vaccine and mass testing, and the treatments that, frankly, this country has done more than any other around the world to develop,” he said.

Julian Tang, an honorary associate professor in respiratory sciences at the University of Leicester, said the various measures in place or being considered, such as limiting gatherings to six or imposing curfews, can act as a “firebreak" in stopping the spread of the virus to the more susceptible groups of the population.

“But these are all incremental and each on their own or in patchy combinations may not be enough, in which case a full local lockdown may be needed to stop the spread," he added.

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Satellite images show smoke from wildfires in the western United States has reached as far as Europe.

Data collected by the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service found smoke from the fires had traveled 8,000 kilometers through the atmosphere to Britain and other parts of northern Europe, reports AP.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates some of the Copernicus satellite monitoring systems, said the fires in California, Oregon and Washington state have emitted an estimated 30.3 million metric tonnes (33.4 million tons) of carbon.

“The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than in any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers, since 2003," Mark Parrington, a senior scientist and wildfire expert at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said.

Parrington said the smoke thickness from the fires, known as aerosol optical depth or AOD, was immense, according to satellite measurements.

“We have seen that AOD levels have reached very high values of seven or above, which has been confirmed by independent ground-based measurement,” he said.

“To put this into perspective, an AOD of one would already indicate a lot of aerosols in the atmosphere.”

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The morning bell Monday marked the first entrance to the classroom for the children of Codogno since Feb. 21, when panicked parents were sent to pick up their children after the northern Italian town gained notoriety as the first in the West to record local transmission of the coronavirus.

While all of Italy’s 8 million school students endured Italy’s strict 2½-month lockdown, few suffered the trauma of the children of Codogno, whose days were punctuated by the sirens of passing ambulances.

“Many lost grandparents,” said Cecilia Cugini, the principal of Codogno’s nursery, elementary and middle schools.

So while the reopening of Italian schools marks an important step in a return to pre-lockdown routine, the step bears more symbolic weight in the 11 towns in Lombardy and Veneto that were the first to be sealed off as coronavirus red zones.

Codogno Mayor Francesco Passerini said the town of 17,000 has had virtually no new cases for months now, but authorities are not being complacent. He said they have spared no effort in working with school administrators to provide maximum protection to the city’s 3,500 students.

“We hope it goes well, so that all we lived can be relegated to memory,” Passerini said.

In Codogno, nursery school children must have their temperatures taken at drop-off but are not required to wear masks. In elementary school and middle school, parents are asked to monitor temperatures at home and masks are required, though they may be lowered during lessons. In schools where distance cannot be maintained, older students will have to keep masks on all day.

Schools throughout the country struggled to identify new classroom spaces, for instance in church oratory buildings, and construct outside learning spaces. In a country where years of spending cuts have left many school buildings run down, administrators have jumped at the chance to take care of long-overdue repairs, in some places delaying school openings while work is finished.

School and local officials in Codogno worked tirelessly to ensure the smoothest return possible for students.

On Monday, masked elementary students waited in spaces designated by red tape to be called to class. Two classes were shifted from the more crowded of Codogno’s two elementary schools to ensure proper distancing. “Parents were not happy but we have dedicated a shuttle bus to bring the children back and forth, to address some of the discomfort,” Cugini said.

The middle school, meanwhile, receive 230 new desks commissioned by the government. Cugini said they will replace older, oversized desks to allow students to maintain enough distance to remove masks. Art and technology classes requiring more working room will rotate through the middle school’s auditorium.

The city also repaired the middle school roof and upgraded the bathrooms as part of preparations — both projects welcome and overdue.

“It is an emblematic moment for us,” Cugini said. “It is important to create an atmosphere so the students can experience the emotions of finding themselves back in school, with classmates and teachers, without being distracted by other things.”

For Maria Cristina Baggi’s daughters, ages 4 and 10, there was no back-to-school shopping for new backpacks: the old ones were fine as they had lain unused for the four months of distance learning last winter and spring. But there was the usual sense of anticipation to be reunited with classmates, the renewal that comes with every school year — tinged now by a not-so-distant concern that the COVID-19 back-to-school project will bring an uptick in contagion even here.

While there are many rules governing classroom behavior, some uncertainty remains.

“We have doubts about how to react to a cold or a coughing attack — that is an unknown for everyone,” Baggi said.

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Coronavirus infections have increased in recent weeks in the UK, according to new estimates.

The government's latest R number is between 1 and 1.2 which means the epidemic is growing, reports BBC.

And a study of thousands of people in England found cases doubling every seven to eight days, with a marked rise in the north and among young people.

New laws on how many people can socialise indoors and outdoors are being introduced from Monday.

The R- reproduction-number describes how many people, on average, each infected person passes the virus on to.

If it is higher than one, as now, it means the number of cases is increasing fast.

The virus is still at much lower levels across the UK than at the peak of the pandemic in April.

Cases reduced dramatically in May and stayed low in June and July, but several large studies of the general population now suggest there has been a resurgence.

The REACT study of more than 150,000 volunteers in England found "accelerating transmission" at the end of August and start of September.

Levels of infection were rising across England but particularly in the north east, north west and Yorkshire.

And there were increases in positive cases in all age groups up to the age of 65, with highest rates of growth in 18-24 year olds.

Prof Paul Elliott, director of the study at Imperial College London, said the data clearly showed "a concerning trend in coronavirus infections" where cases are growing quickly across England and "no longer concentrated in key workers".

He said there was evidence of "an epidemic in the community" and not the result of more people being tested.

Nicola Sturgeon has warned that the average number of cases in Scotland has been "more than trebling every three weeks".

However in Wales, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says there has been no increase in cases during the first week in September, estimates 1,200 people had coronavirus in the week between 30 August and 5 September.

In England, the equivalent estimate was 39,700 - 11,000 more than the previous week.

The ONS bases its figures on thousands of swab tests carried out in households, whether people have symptoms or not.

Katherine Kent, from the ONS infection survey, said the results suggested "an increase in Covid-19 infections in England during recent weeks, with higher infection rates among 17-34 year olds".

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