Britain locks down city of Leicester after COVID-19 flare-up

Britain has imposed a stringent lockdown on the English city of Leicester following a local flare-up of the novel coronavirus, overshadowing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempts to nudge the country back to normality. The United Kingdom has been one of the world’s worst-hit areas, with more than 54,000 deaths in confirmed or suspected cases, though infections have waned and many restrictions are to be lifted across England from Saturday to revive the economy. But the authorities were forced to take action in Leicester, a city of around 330,000 people, where the seven-day infection rate was three times higher than the next-worst city. Leicester, in England’s eastern Midlands, accounted for 10% of all positive cases in England in the past week, the government said. “It’s depressing,” Stuart Towers, landlord of the Market Tavern pub told Reuters. “We were all looking forward to opening Saturday and the next thing you know that’s it. What do we do now?”