The current Covid spike in Northern Ireland is troubling but these measures will also cause great harm

Northern Ireland was already in a lockdown, from December 26.

Now it is going into a tighter one, although details will only be divulged today. It could hardly have been much tighter than it already was.

Non essential retail is closed. Hospitality is already closed, apart from takeaways. Close contact such as hair dressing is already closed. We have had what was in effect a curfew. People are already advised against non essential travel. They are already encouraged to work from home if possible.

Arlene Foster said last night that the new stay home approach was because of the “seriousness of situation”. If that is so, then it was unwise of the first minister in November to give assurances about business re-openings and about adopting a strategy of living with the virus.

The one element of relative normality was supposed to be schools, which were due to return today. That will not now happen, and might not in fact happen until next month.

Closure of schools wreaks havoc with working parents, and it causes lasting damage to children’s education. There is clear evidence that children are at tiny risk from Covid, and strong evidence that younger children rarely infect adults.

Our Covid strategy continues to be that responding to it takes precedence over every other aspect of life, from education to private enterprise to mental health to the vast array of non Covid treatments on the NHS.

The spike in Covid infections in NI has been alarming and suggests that swathes of the population are not social distancing. But these measures will themselves cause great harm.

It is particularly troubling that schools, the one area in which there seemed to be a consensus to stand firm, could now be closed for months, with exams again scrapped.

It is further troubling that Dr William Kitchen, again on these pages (see page 18) and again almost alone, is flagging up the obvious: that long-term opponents of grammar schools could use this to try to end academic selection entirely.

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