Professor Robert West, a participant in the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which advises SAGE, said the new variant of Covid-19 is around 50 percent more infectious compared to the virus that infected people last March.
He said: “That means that if we were to achieve the same result as we got in March we would have to have a stricter lockdown, and it’s not stricter.”
Asked if he thinks they should change, he told BBC News: “Yes, I do. Not just me.
“I think probably most of the people I talk to, epidemiologists, and medical scientists and virologists.”
