Health leaders warned late Tuesday that the U.K. risks “stumbling into a winter crisis” if the government does not enact its “Plan B,” a pledge it made last month in which it said it would reimpose Covid measures if data suggested the National Health Service was “likely to come under unsustainable pressure.”…

They warned that the National Health Service “is seeing worrying increases in coronavirus cases in its hospitals and the community at a time when it is preparing for a busy winter period, its staff are close to burnout, and it is being expected to recover many of its services that were disrupted by the pandemic.”…

On Wednesday, the U.K.’s Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng reiterated that position, saying: “I absolutely think that it would be completely wrong for us to go back into a lockdown,” he told Times Radio.

Noting that hospitalizations and death rates were much lower than in previous peaks of the pandemic, he added that “we are learning, I think, to live with the virus.”