Covid: Police arrest more than a dozen protesters at anti-lockdown march in London

Rally comes a day after major incident declared by city’s mayor

Sixteen protestors have been arrested after attending an anti-lockdown march in south-west London in defiance of legislation designed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Officers broke up at the rally of about 30 people as they walked down Clapham High Street on Saturday afternoon, a day that saw the number of deaths attributed to the virus in the UK exceed 80,000 since the outbreak’s beginning.

The capital has been particularly hard-hit throughout the pandemic, with mayor Sadiq Khan declaring a “major incident” across the city on Friday as infections risk overwhelming London’s hospitals.

The rally, which began shortly after midday, became a subject of derision for bystanders - with one woman seen yelling from her car “There’s a pandemic going on, you t***s” as they carried on towards Stockwell.

The mask-free rally saw dozens of metropolitan police officers deployed to Clapham Common, where 12 people were arrested and the crowd was dispersed.

On the protest, the Met tweeted: “Gathering for the purpose of a protest is not an exemption to the rules & and people looking to attend may face enforcement action.”

NHS England figures showed the number of Covid patients in London hospitals stands at 7,277, up 32 per cent on the previous week.

Around eight in 10 recent positive cases of Covid-19 in London and eastern England could be the new variant discovered in the UK, according to the ONS.

Elsewhere opposition to coronavirus restrictions also led to arrests - with Dorset Police apprehending three people in Bournemouth town centre and issuing seven fixed penalty notices following a similar protest.

Dorset Police chief constable James Vaughan said: “I condemn the actions of these selfish individuals who knowingly flouted the lockdown restrictions to carry out this protest activity.

“Their reckless actions come at a time when our county is facing its highest number of cases since the beginning of this pandemic.”

Additional reporting by agencies