Alarming pictures are emerging from London as commuters cram onto trains while the rest of the world is practicing social distancing.
One passenger, David Riley, posted a photo on Twitter showing passengers piled into the tube just inches from each other, at a time when everyone is supposed to stand at least six feet apart.
“This was my commute to work in London this morning @BorisJohnson,” he wrote, tagging the UK Prime Minister.
“This is what you get on London underground when you reduce the service but people still have to go to work. There was a lot of coughing too. How do we stay safe in this environment?”
Calling on residents to only travel if absolutely necessary, Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a dramatic reduction in public transport services this week; but critics claim this just forces more people to squeeze onto the few remaining trains.
This was my commute to work in London this morning @BorisJohnson. This is what you get on London underground when you reduce the service but people still have to go to work. There was a lot of coughing too.
How do we stay safe in this environment?#CoronaVirusUpdate pic.twitter.com/wT345MEjND
— Lord Riley (@DRileyamusing) March 20, 2020
Many are calling for England to follow its neighbors and enforce a stricter lockdown of the country; while the government has advised the public not to visit pubs and restaurants, the measures are voluntary – and as pictures from full bars show, are being ignored by some.
Officials in Italy, the European country hardest hit by the outbreak, have warned the continent it needs to lock down as soon as possible to stop a “tsunami” of patients from overwhelming its hospitals.
“If other countries want to have enough ICU beds to treat all the Covid-19 patients that are going to be arriving in their hospitals, they have to decrease the peak of the tsunami of cases that are coming,” warned Davide Manca, a professor of process systems engineering in Milan, per The Independent.
“The most effective way to do this is to follow and enforce Italy’s very strict quarantine and social distancing measures, and make sure they are implemented.”
Italy has more than 47,000 recorded cases of COVID-19 and more than 4,000 deaths, while the UK has 4,000 and 177 deaths, so far.
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