Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations have been cancelled in London due to the coronavirus threat, the Mayor has announced.
The capital’s official celebrations were due to take place this Sunday, with St Patrick’s Day falling on March 17.
Sadiq Khan tweeted: ‘London’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations are an annual highlight for many, so I’m incredibly disappointed that this year’s event has had to be cancelled as key performers and parade participants are no longer able to participate due to the ongoing threat of coronavirus.
Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations have been cancelled in London due to the coronavirus threat, the Mayor has announced
Sadiq Khan tweeted: ‘London’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations are an annual highlight for many, so I’m incredibly disappointed that this year’s event has had to be cancelled’
‘London’s Irish community makes a huge contribution to our great city. I recognise that the unavailability of key performers and parade participants leaves no choice but to cancel.
‘I know this will be extremely disappointing news for so many Londoners and visitors to our capital.’
The event, which would have been in its 18th year, sees the streets of central London filled with live entertainment and parades alongside stalls of Irish food and drink.
London has decided to call off festivities alongside Dublin, New York and other major cities around the world in a bid to curb the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before his announcement earlier this morning, Mr Khan was facing criticism for failing to call off the mass gathering, with mayoral hopeful Rory Stewart branding his rival ‘irresponsible’.
Speaking to LBC Radio on Thursday, the former Tory MP accused both the current mayor and the Prime Minister of being ‘far too slow’ to respond to the virus outbreak.
The mayor added: ‘I’m incredibly disappointed that this year’s event has had to be cancelled as key performers and parade participants are no longer able to participate’
He told host Nick Ferrari: ‘Schools should be closed already. Gatherings should be banned. The St Patrick’s Day Parade which is coming this weekend should be banned.
‘All the evidence from other countries is that the sooner you move to close schools, stop gatherings and encourage people to work from home, the more chance you have of getting on top of this and reducing the death toll.’
It comes as a London Underground tube driver tested positive for the virus and is now in self-isolation.
The man, who works on the Tube’s Jubilee Line, has been off work this week after returning from holiday in Vietnam, sources said.
An internal message to staff said the driver, based at the North Greenwich depot, had been self-isolating but had tested positive for Covid-19.
The official number of coronavirus cases in the UK yesterday jumped by 134 to 596 with 10 deaths.
But the Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said the true number was probably up to 10,000 cases and growing rapidly.
This morning the UK’s chief scientific adviser revealed 60 per cent of the British population – around 40million people – need to catch coronavirus to develop ‘herd immunity’, the Government’s controversial policy to stop it returning annually.
Sir Patrick Vallance said millions fighting off the virus will ‘help’ in the long run because it is likely to become an ‘annual virus’.
He told Sky News: ‘Sixty per cent is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.’
Sir Patrick told the BBC the advice the Government is following is not looking to ‘suppress’ the disease entirely but to help create a ‘herd immunity in the UK’.
Asked if there is a fear clamping down too hard on its spread could see it return, Sir Patrick said: ‘That is exactly the risk you would expect from previous epidemics.
‘If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time.
‘Because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.’
Using herd immunity to tackle an illness the PM admits will claim many lives is controversial, because it is usually reserved for vaccination programmes were no one will die.
The theory with coronavirus is if a high enough proportion of the population gains immunity now, it is less likely to find a susceptible person to infect next time round.
Sir Patrick Vallance said millions fighting off the virus that has killed ten in Britain and almost 5,000 worldwide will ‘help’ in the long run because it is likely to become an ‘annual virus’
Ex-Tory Minister Rory Stewart described the concept as ‘eccentric’, having helped tackle the ebola outbreak in Africa as International Development Secretary in 2019.
He told CNN last night: ‘This is a very eccentric policy and I am troubled by it on a number of different levels.
‘One of them is if the UK, with all its resources as a major economy is one of the only countries to actually allow this virus to spread quickly that will pose huge strains for the rest of the world system.
‘Secondly this problem is this theory is based on very, very complex modelling and they are putting a lot of faith in the mathematical modelling to be able to land their peak in the summer.
‘And thirdly I think they underestimating the impact that I think is going to hit our health system if they allow it to go in this direction.’
When asked about the lock-down measures in Italy and Ireland, Sir Patrick said today it was ‘impossible’ for a country to attempt to self-isolate its entire population.
He added: ‘We want to suppress it, not get rid of it completely, which you can’t do anyway, and also allow enough of us who are going to get mild illness to become immune to this to help with the sort of whole population response which would protect everybody.
‘We think that this virus is likely to be one that comes back year on year, become like a seasonal virus, and communities will become immune to it, and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term.’