Boris Johnson Braces for England Lockdown as Coronavirus Cases Surge

Boris Johnson faces being forced into imposing a national lockdown as internal government projections put the U.K. on course for a prolonged winter peak in the pandemic -- with more deaths than last spring. The British prime minister has so far resisted a second country-wide lockdown, despite calls from the opposition Labour Party -- and his own scientific advisers last month -- to order a temporary “circuit breaker” to get the virus under control. But new modeling by the government’s emergency scientific committee SAGE suggests the second wave of the pandemic will lead to more deaths than the first because the daily death toll will stay high for longer, even though it will peak at a lower level.