France goes into lockdown from Covid-19, but NOT due to climate change

By Asitha Jayawardena

France will go into a month-long coronavirus lockdown from midnight on Friday 19 March 2021, joining Italy, UK and Ireland. Globally, Covid-19 has now infected 122 million people and sadly 2.7 million lost their lives.

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine resumed

Meanwhile, the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine is ‘safe and effective’ and its benefits outweigh the risks, said the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

It removed the suspension of the jab in some countries, where the use of the jab was halted, pending the investigations of the safety of the vaccine. The reason is the mounting evidence of blood clotting only if it affects negligible cases.

Still, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued to say that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is safe.

1 in 3 areas in the UK

In the UK, the Covid-19 rate goes up in one in three areas. In other words, coronavirus is on the rise in 135 out of 380 local council areas, or 36% of the UK, in the week ending on 11 March.

The third lockdown in the UK is in the process of being eased with the second part of phase one on March 29. The Rule of Six will kick in, where six people from two households would be able to socialise outdoors. Eventually, the fourth phase will be over on 21 June.

Will UK’s battle with Covid-19 be over?

Will it be over after lockdown?

No, said the Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Chris Whitty at the House of Commons when the lockdown was on in early March 2021. They said the removal of the lockdown in the UK too quickly against the road map will bring another, in late summer or autumn.

Days later, Dr Susan Hopkins, Public Health England’s strategic response director for Covid-19, said that the Covid-19 will bring difficult autumn and hard winter. Moreover, Professor Sir Ian Diamond, head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said that no doubt that autumn will bring a further wave of Covid-19.

The scientists are clear that the speedy release of the current lockdown will bring chaos and we have to be careful when we go into autumn because Covid-19 has got ‘no heart’.

Lockdown due to climate change?

How does the vaccine debacle of Covid-19 affect climate change?

The UK will hold the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 1–12 November 2021. After five years of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015, the goal of COP26 is to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change.

To be hosted in November 2020 but later postponed to 2021, the event will bring together heads of states, climate experts and campaigners. The postponing of the COP26 conference is currently being discussed for the second time as only 7 months to go to the event.

The urgency of climate change is currently pushed aside by that of Covid-19, which is unlikely to end in 2021. Climate change is the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic although it is not yet accepted in full. Covid-19 is a fast executioner but climate change is a slow killer – at least for now!

Suppose one day, Covid-19 is controlled and we are back to normal, then climate change will hit back – hard. And it will be too late then.