Coronavirus: Rory Stewart cancels London mayoral campaign launch
Rory Stewart has cancelled his London mayoral campaign launch due to fears over coronavirus.
Stewart yesterday criticised the government for not acting “much more aggressively” to stop the spread of Covid-19 and called for all schools to to be closed and all large public gatherings cancelled immediately.
Last night, he said it was important for him to “show an example” and cancel next week’s launch.
Taking to Twitter, he said the launch will now happen online in light of the growing number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK, which passed 300 yesterday.
“We have to take the coronavirus seriously and that means stopping large scale gatherings,” Stewart said.
“We should be doing this across London and we’re going to a show an example through the way we do our own campaign.”
Stewart has been criticised by some for comments, with Liberal Democrat mayoral challenger Siobhan Benita accusing him of “sowing distrust” in medical experts.
The UK’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty said at a press conferences yesterday that the government would soon start telling people to self-isolate if they have any flu-like symptoms.
Boris Johnson’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance denied there was any need to ban large gatherings at the same press conference yesterday.
“One person in a 70,0000 seater stadium isn’t going to infect the stadium,” he said.
It comes as Italy announced last night it had dramatically increased measures to stop the spread of the virus by quarantining the entire country.
Italy has been the worst hit country in Europe by Covid-19 and has led to 463 deaths amdist 9,172 confirmed cases.
Stewart believes the government should be following Italy’s lead in taking an aggressive approach.
He said: “The government and the mayor keep saying they are simply following ‘scientific advice’.
“But the scientists are clear that this is now a political decision – on whether the government are prepared to spend very serious sums of money, and take a large economic hit, to maximise protection of the population.”