Scotland Orders New Lockdown as Virus Spread Accelerates

(Bloomberg) -- Scotland will implement another lockdown from midnight on Monday, including keeping schools closed and ordering people to largely remain at home, as a new strain of the coronavirus causes a spike in infections.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh there was no choice but to take more drastic action as hospital admissions reached levels not seen since the previous peak of the pandemic in April. School closures will be reviewed in the middle of January.

Sturgeon also said the country’s vaccination program was being rolled out more quickly, with the first people getting the shot developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc on Monday. “We are now in a race between the vaccine and the virus,” she said.

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