Leicester put in tighter lockdown after rise in coronavirus cases

Leicester is to be put under a tighter lockdown than the rest of country from Tuesday after the English city reported an increase in coronavirus cases, confronting the government with the first test of its ability to control the virus while opening up the economy. Health secretary Matt Hancock said non-essential shops had been told to close on Tuesday and schools asked to shut their doors to the majority of their pupils from Thursday. Classes will remain open for vulnerable children and children of critical workers. But the city’s mayor and a local senior doctor criticised the way the testing system was working, complaining about the lack of data at local level and efficacy of the track and trace system. A spike of more than 900 cases since mid-June, which local officials were only made aware of late last week, had led Public Health England (PHE) to support the first big “local lockdown”.