美国国家公共电台 NPR 英国疫情失控 首相约翰逊宣布再次全面封锁（在线收听）

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was desperate to avoid this. But after surging infections and the largest death toll in Europe from COVID-19, he has called for another lockdown. It begins Thursday, and it will last for at least four weeks. NPR's London correspondent Frank Langfitt joins us now.

英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊曾不顾一切地避免这种情况。但在该国的新冠肺炎感染人数和死亡人数居欧洲之首后，他呼吁再次封国。这次封锁从周四开始，至少持续四周时间。NPR新闻驻伦敦记者弗兰克·朗菲特将和我们连线。

Hi, Frank.

你好，弗兰克。

FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Rachel.

弗兰克·朗菲特连线：你好。早上好，蕾切尔。

MARTIN: So what are these new restrictions?

马丁：这些新的限制措施包括什么？

LANGFITT: Well, pubs are going to close, restaurants, bars, nonessential retail. This will not be as severe as the first lockdown, which was in late March, in that schools and universities are going to stay open. But it's going to be another economic hit to this country. And so what the government's going to do is going to extend what it calls its furlough scheme, where it pays up to 80% of salaries for workers who have been laid off basically, put on furlough. And of course, the problem is not just this in the U.K. It's been spreading throughout Europe. France went into a lockdown on Friday. Germany is closing bars, restaurants, gyms and theaters today.

朗菲特：酒馆、餐厅、酒吧以及非必要零售店均将关闭。这次封锁不会像3月底第一次封锁那样严重，因为学校和大学将保持开放。但这将是英国遭遇的又一次经济打击。因此，政府将打算延长其所谓的“休假计划”，即为失业员工支付高达80%的工资，让他们开始休假。当然，问题不仅出现在英国，而是蔓延到整个欧洲。法国于周五进入封锁状态。而德国今天将关闭酒吧、餐厅、健身房和剧院。

MARTIN: So, Frank, you know Prime Minister Boris Johnson was against doing a second lockdown.

马丁：弗兰克，首相鲍里斯·约翰逊曾反对二次封锁。

LANGFITT: Absolutely.

朗菲特：当然。

MARTIN: He said it was going to be a disaster.

马丁：他说那将是一场灾难。

LANGFITT: Yes.

朗菲特：是的。

MARTIN: So what changed for him?

马丁：那他为何改变主意？

LANGFITT: I think it's the advice of his scientists, of scientific advisers and the fact that the numbers are clearly out of control. There was one government estimate that he mentioned on Saturday night addressing the nation, as high as 50,000 new cases a day. This is just a sea change from what we saw in the summer where things were pretty normal here and maybe, you know, were under 600 on some days in terms of cases. Now, what Boris Johnson told the nation is if nothing more is done about this, we could see as high as 4,000 deaths a day here, and it could overwhelm the health system. And on Saturday night, Johnson said, you know, this could be one of the in fact — one of the impacts on one section of England.

朗菲特：我认为这是他的科学家和科学顾问的建议，而且事实上，疫情显然已经失控。据他周六晚上发表全国讲话时提到的政府评估，每天的新增病例高达5万例。这与我们在夏天看到的情况有很大不同，当时情况相当正常，某些日子的病例数可能低于600例。现在，鲍里斯·约翰逊告诉英国民众，如果对此不采取更多措施，我们可能会看到每天多达4000人死亡，这可能会使卫生系统不堪重负。约翰逊在周六晚上表示，这可能是对英格兰某个地区的影响之一。

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PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON: The current projections mean that hospitals in the South West will run out of capacity in just a matter of weeks unless we act.

英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊：目前的预测意味着，如果我们不采取行动，西南部的医院将在几周内耗尽床位。

MARTIN: Thus the new restrictions — but I mean, the U.K. first did this back in March. That was...

马丁：因此新的限制措施……英国曾在3月份实施过。那就是……

LANGFITT: Yep.

朗菲特：是的。

MARTIN: ...The first lockdown. How does it find itself in the same place seven months later?

马丁：……第一次封锁。七个月后，为何同一个地方需要再次封锁？

LANGFITT: Well, I think a lot of people are asking themselves that question. I mean, one thing clearly is not enough social distancing. People did really relax last summer. People went to the beach. It was — it did feel normal, unlike the States and what you were going through there. And one thing — I'll give you a perfect example. Just on Saturday night, cops in Bristol in South West of England broke up a rave with 700 people — so not very helpful.

朗菲特：我想很多人都在问自己这个问题。有个原因很明显，那就是社交距离不够。去年夏天人们确实很放松。他们去了海滩游玩。感觉很正常，不像美国和你在那里所经历的一切。还有一件事，我来给你举个完美的例子。就在周六晚上，英国西南部布里斯托尔的警察驱散了一场700人的狂欢派对，所以没什么帮助。

MARTIN: Wow.

马丁：哇。

LANGFITT: There's also been this fascinating study, which I think is really worth focusing on. It's out of — by scholars in Switzerland and Spain. And it suggests that a majority of the new cases here are connected to a variant of the virus that appears to have been imported from the U.K. over the summer but from British travelers who were coming back from Spain after the lockdown was lifted. Now, this doesn't mean that this Spanish variant of the virus drove the second surge, but it's a sign that the U.K. probably wasn't doing enough to prevent more cases from coming in here during the summer when many people were traveling to the continent for summer holidays.

朗菲特：还有一项引人注目的研究，我认为这确实值得关注。这是瑞士和西班牙学者进行的研究。研究表明大多数新增病例都与该病毒的变体有关，而这种病毒似乎是从夏天时从英国输入的，但实际上来自封锁解除后去西班牙度假归来的英国游客。这并不意味着这种西班牙病毒变体推动了第二次病例激增，而是标志着英国在夏季可能没有采取足够的措施来阻止更多病例输入，当时有许多人前往欧洲大陆享受暑假。

I talked to a woman named Emma Hodcroft. She's an epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. She's the lead author of this study, and I asked her kind of like how she felt when she saw this discovery.

我采访一位名为叫艾玛·霍德克罗夫特的女性。她是瑞士伯尔尼大学的流行病学家。她是这项研究的主要作者，我问她在看到这一发现时有何感觉。

EMMA HODCROFT: It's a feeling of disappointment because it shows that even though we did try hard over the summer, it wasn't enough. And I think that over the summer, we perhaps wished very much that things would be normal without necessarily taking the actions that we needed to to make that a reality.

艾玛·霍德克罗夫特：我有种失望的感觉，因为这表明，尽管我们在今年夏天确实曾努力控制疫情，但做得还不够。我认为，在这个夏天，我们可能非常希望一切正常，而不必采取必要的行动，使之成为现实。

LANGFITT: And now people again, Rachel, just like March, they're stocking up. I got my hair cut on Saturday, and a lot of the barbershops here in my town were full.

朗菲特：蕾切尔，现在和三月份一样，人们又开始国货了。我周六去理发，镇上很多理发店都客满了。

MARTIN: NPR's Frank Langfitt from London.

马丁：以上是NPR新闻的弗兰克·朗菲特从伦敦带来的报道。

Thanks, Frank.

谢谢你，弗兰克。

LANGFITT: You're very welcome, Rachel.

朗菲特：不客气，蕾切尔。