British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces national lockdown until December 2 as coronavirus cases top 1 million

For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic started this year, the United Kingdom recorded 1 million cases of coronavirus as the country braced for another round of lockdown since March. Prime Minister Boris Johnson expected to announce a month-long national lockdown during a 5 P.M. press conference in London.

“From Thursday until the start of December you must stay at home, you may only leave home for specific reasons”

Boris Johnson announces an England-wide lockdown, saying “Now is the time to take action, because there is no alternative”https://t.co/Aq1IbHukyq pic.twitter.com/WbJXnlAhE9

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) October 31, 2020

Britain is not alone. This Wednesday, 523 French people died of coronavirus in just 24 hours. The French government is also planning a month-long nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19

For the first time last week Thursday, Europe reported 200,000 daily infections, as many Southern European countries reported their highest number of cases in a single day. So far, Europe accounts for nearly 19% of global deaths and about 22% of global cases.

Testing data as of October 30, 2020, 7:25 AM EDT Sources: OECD for number of hospital beds (2016 for the U.S., 2017 for other countries), government agencies and the COVID Tracking Project via Our World in Data for testing data (various recent dates) (reported in the past 45 days) and the U.S. Census Bureau for population figures (2019).

In the meantime, while the rest of Europe is going through the second round of lockdowns, Sweden remains the only country where life has returned back to normal. The tiny Scandinavian country, which never had a lockdown, saw its COVID-19 cases going down at a time when countries across Europe are seeing alarming surges in daily coronavirus infections.

According to Reuters tally, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Russia, Belgium, and Spain account for nearly two-thirds of about 250,000 deaths registered until now from a total of about 8 million cases across Europe.