Having listened to the Prime Minister address the nation tonight on the latest coronavirus restrictions, I couldn’t help raise the question: is all this really enough?
As we were presented with three new tiers of restrictions - very high, high and medium - I couldn’t help feeling that they were really not enough to halt the progress of the virus.
And the Liverpool City region is the only area with those toughest restrictions with the total closures of bars and pubs.
Before Boris Johnson spoke, I looked at BBC News with their health editor, Hugh Pym reporting from Whiston Hospital at Knowsley near Liverpool.
It was quite a shocking report with beds filling with new COVID cases.
It was as though we were back to square one with more COVID cases in hospital now nationally than there were on 23rd March when we were in national lockdown.
This is a bleak and frightening picture.
And when he talked to the nation tonight, Boris Johnson said the lights were flashing like dashboard warnings on a passenger jet.
The reality is that the number of cases has gone up four times in four weeks - the latest total is 13,972 cases of coronavirus with 50 new deaths.
Here in the South West we are on the medium tier but how long will that last? We must ask ourselves as the pandemic spreads throughout the country.
The Prime Minister set out the three tier restrictions system with Liverpool at the pinnacle of their very high system but 12 areas in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber are close behind.
Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer said he was not confident that the tier three restrictions were going to challenge the pandemic.
And you have to ask the question: what has really changed?
My take is that there will now be tougher restrictions being imposed throughout the country.
And local authorities will be playing an even more important part in trying to help crush this deadly virus in a second surge made all the worse by normal winter conditions.
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