The prospect of a local lockdown is a daunting prospect for most Britons but opinions over whether this is the right course of action due to fears over finances, mental health and general fatigue abound.

Our readers had mixed reactions to the lockdowns which have already been rolled out to varying degrees in the north of England in cities such as Liverpool, with Manchester and sections of the north east expected to follow in the coming days and weeks.

Some readers expressed their view that the situation, though, grave can only be resolved by local lockdowns such as the ones announced by the Prime Minister earlier this week in the House of Commons.

Reader Matthew Dryden commented “As the horrors of the first lockdown are now becoming apparent it seems like the right thing to do.”

One of the key moot points with regards to local lockdowns is that current advice from bodies such as the World Health Organisation are recommending that an operational track-and-trace system alongside short length national lockdowns would be the most suitable approach.

In this vein, Labour Party leader Kier Starmer asserted earlier this week that a ‘circuit breaker’ national lockdown would be his preferred course of action.

Another reader commented: “This is typical of a Conservative administration! They keep bleating on “we are following the scientific advice”, now when the scientific advice requests a national lockdown for two weeks, what happens? The conservative administration go against it!”

This view was shared by one reader who appeared to have lost confidence in the Prime Minister’s policies which they feel are increasingly going against scientific advice in the fight against the virus.

“So why does Boris Johnson always say they are going by the science when he ignores the advice from SAGE and the NHS? No wonder the whole of the UK is in a bad state of the Covid-19 it started rising the minute pubs were allowed to open.”