Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt calls on government to close borders and schools and ban household mixing

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has urged Boris Johnson to close schools in England and ban all household mixing in a bid to curb the rampant spread of Covid-19 across the country.

In a major intervention, the MP for South West Surrey also called for the closure of Britain’s borders to prevent importing new infection clusters, amid fears that vaccines could prove ineffective against the new South African variant of coronavirus.  

In a series of tweets he warned that the pressures facing hospitals are “off-the-scale worse” than any winter crisis he faced during his tenure as the UK’s longest serving health secretary.

Mr Hunt, who is the current chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committe, said it was now “time to act” after the Prime Minister said there was “no question” restrictions would have to be tightened.

“Time to act: thread on why we need to close schools, borders, and ban all household mixing RIGHT AWAY”, he wrote.

“To those arguing winter is always like this in the NHS: you are wrong. I faced four serious winter crises as Health Sec and the situation now is off-the-scale worse than any of those.”

He continued: “It’s true that we often had to cancel elective care in Jan to protect emergency care but that too is under severe pressure with record trolley waits for the very sickest patients.

“Even more worryingly fewer heart attack patients appear to be presenting in ICUs, perhaps because they are not dialling 999 when they need to.

“Full credit to NHS for keeping cancer services open but in Wave 1 there was still a 2/3 drop in cancer appts: people didn’t come forward to GPs or want to go to hospitals, with many potentially avoidable cancer deaths. We hoped to avoid that this time but now looking unlikely.”

Mr Hunt, who ran against Mr Johnson in last year’s Conservative leadership race, later told the World at One that evidence showed “countries that act earlier and more decisively end up both saving more lives and protecting their economies.”

It comes as a coalition of education unions warned that bringing all pupils back to school could fuel the pandemic and put teachers at “serious risk” of falling ill amid the new variant of Covid-19.

The Government’s “chaotic” handling of the opening of schools has caused confusion for parents and teachers, according to a joint statement from unions representing school staff and headteachers.

All of London’s primary schools and those in some surrounding areas worst hit by Covid-19 will not reopen until January 18, with students elsewhere in England expected to return to class this week.

Mr Johnson has insisted that schools are safe as he said that closing primary schools was a “last resort”.

The Prime Minister said: “The risk to teachers, and of course we will do everything we can to protect teachers, but the risk to teachers is no greater than it is to anyone else.

“The reasons for wanting to keep schools open I think are very, very powerful.”

On Sunday Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for an immediate national lockdown, although stopped short of calling for all schools to be closed.

He said: “It is inevitable more schools are going to have to close and the Government needs to plan for children’s learning and also for working parents.

“So it is inevitable more schools are going to close.

“But the more important thing in a way is the national restrictions that need to come in in the next 24 hours.”