New Tiers Announced for the North West
Large parts move into Tier Four
Last updated 30th Dec 2020
From midnight all ten boroughs in Greater Manchester will be under Tier4 coronavirus restrictions.
Liverpool City Region has now been moved back into tier 3
Matt Hancock added that three quarters of the country will be in Tier 3 or Tier 4 by Thursday morning.
He said: Even in most areas not moving into Tier 4, cases are rising too, and it is therefore necessary to apply Tier 3 measures more broadly too - including in Liverpool and North Yorkshire.
The rest of Yorkshire remains in Tier 3. These changes will take effect from 00:01 tomorrow morning.
The new variant means that three quarters of the population are now going to be in Tier 4 and almost all of the country in Tiers 3 and 4.
And I know that Tier 3 and 4 measures place a significant burden on people, and especially on businesses affected, but I am afraid it is absolutely necessary because of the number of cases that we've seen.
But where we are still able to give places greater freedoms, we will continue to do so.''
Metro mayor for the Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram said: Despite our area leading on many of the medical developments in the fight against Covid, we have seen transmission rates rise recently in every part of our city region, leading to a worrying uptick in positive cases.
At the same time cases have risen at alarming rates across the rest of the country, threatening to push our NHS to its limits.
Being placed into Tier 3 today is something that none of us wanted but I hope that these new measures help to slow down and contain the spread of the virus quickly.''
He promised to support local businesses and called for more Government assistance.
He added: We have seen throughout the past 10 months that restrictions can only suppress the virus for a limited period of time.
That's why I have called on ministers to bring forward plans to rapidly increase the speed of the vaccine rollout, so that we can return to some sort of normality for good at the earliest opportunity.''
While Cheshire and Warrington are now in Tier4.
Cumbria to move into tier four restrictions from midnight
A total of 12 million people will be in Tier 3 from December 31, or 22% of the population of England.
No area will be in Tier 2, while some 2,000 people - the population of the Isles of Scilly - will be in Tier 1.