SPORT and culture events will be able to start up again in June – but only from behind closed doors under the Government’s new plans to ease lockdown.
Full sports matches and any mass gatherings will stay banned for many more months.
The new guidance said: “Organisations should prepare… (for) cultural and sporting events to take behind closed-doors for broadcast, while avoiding the risk of large-scale social contact.
While parts of Britain are being slowly opened up again over the next few months, under the Government’s full 50-page plan to end lockdown, sports events, pubs and other events will be the very last to be allowed to reopen.
The guidance said: “It is likely that reopening indoor public spaces and leisure facilities, premises whose core purpose is social interaction (and) venues that attract large crowds (like sports stadiums)… may only be fully possible significantly later depending on the reduction in numbers of infections.”
If there is no vaccine for the deadly coronavirus, these restrictions could be in place for the long haul.
This will be crushing news for football clubs who will have to prepare for at least half of next season to be behind closed doors.
And it will mean certain closure for some teams who will be unable to continue.
The huge plan revealed:
- People won’t get the chance to see their relatives again properly for at least weeks to come – but ministers are looking at allowing one household to see another one
- Brits will be advised to wear face masks on public transport and anywhere where people can’t stay 2m apart
- The Government want all primary school kids to go back to school for a month before the summer holidays
- The public are now allowed to go outside for leisure reasons, but they can’t stay overnight for a holiday
- Sporting events to take place behind closed-doors for broadcast within weeks
Pubs will also be closed until the danger level from coronavirus in the UK is down to a much lower level – so Brits won’t be able to pile into boozers to watch any matches.
The Prime Minister said last night: “At the earliest by July … we will hope to re-open at least some of the hospitality industry and other public places, provided they are safe and enforce social distancing.
“Throughout this period of the next two months we will be driven not by mere hope or economic necessity.
“We are going to be driven by the science, the data and public health.”
He added: “And I must stress again that all of this is conditional, it all depends on a series of big ‘ifs’.
“It depends on all of us – the entire country – to follow the advice, to observe social distancing, and to keep that R (rate of transmission) down.”
