Boris Johnson tonight revealed that one in 50 of the population is infected with coronavirus as he said 1.3million people have now been vaccinated.
The PM told a Downing Street briefing that the spread of the disease had made lockdown impossible to avoid.
But he insisted the measures can get the situation under control while vaccines are rolled out – dismissing anxiety that he is ‘over-promising’ by claiming the most vulnerable categories can be given jabs by mid-February.
Mr Johnson vowed to give the country ‘jab by jab’ information about the crucial process.
He was flanked at the press conference by medical and science chiefs Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance – whose warnings about the threat of the NHS being overwhelmed sparked the extraordinary U-turn to plunge England into new restrictions.
The scale of the problem was underlined tonight as the UK reported a record 60,916 cases – up nearly 15 per cent on last Tuesday. The tally of deaths was 830, double the number from last week.
As ministers battle to prevent the brutal squeeze wiping out the hospitality and leisure sectors, Rishi Sunak has unveiled another £4.6billion bailout, offering one-off grants of up to £9,000 to keep venues afloat for the next seven weeks.
The Chancellor also hinted that furlough could be extended beyond April if necessary, even though the government’s borrowing is spiralling out of control.
But businesses are urging the government to go further by offering VAT and rates relief.
And Tory unrest is growing amid fears that Mr Johnson has raised false hopes that the measures can be lifted by mid-February.
Michael Gove admitted this morning that there was no ‘certainty’ on the timeline, as it depends on the government meeting its highly ambitious targets for vaccinating more than 13million of the most vulnerable in society.
The Cabinet Office minister also cautioned that even in the best case scenario not ‘all’ of the curbs will go, as he braced the weary public for a long haul to combat the fast-spreading new variant of coronavirus.
Some Conservative MPs are demanding to know why more preparation was not done for the vaccine drive in the autumn, pointing out that Israel has been more successful despite not having a ‘functional’ government.
‘We need that scaling up of vaccination like Israel has managed to achieve,’ one backbencher told MailOnline. ‘Why aren’t we there already? Why hasn’t the time been used over the summer and autumn to get the army of vaccinators in place?
‘The only limitation should be the speed by which the manufacturers are able to supply it to you.
‘The whole future of the economy, the future of saving more lives, the future of a sense of normality is in the hands of the vaccinator. That is where we now are.’
Other senior MPs were just as gloomy. ‘We are over-promising and under-delivering,’ one said. ‘It is a big risk. They are not prepared and they are not ready to do it.
‘The problem is people don’t understand the logistics of administering this vaccine and checking people are OK and doing the paperwork. It is not just a case of putting a jab in someone’s arm.’
Labour leader Keir Starmer said the crackdown was ‘essential’ and his MPs will support them, effectively guaranteeing their approval in the Commons. But he criticised the government for not changing course sooner and expressed serious doubts about the optimism over distributing vaccines.
‘The prime minister said seven weeks – that’s to allow the vaccination programme to be rolled out for 13 to 14million people,’ Sir Keir said.
‘That’s the ambition of the prime minister. I hope he is not over-promising. It’s going to be a struggle and we need to make this work.’
Just a day after he urged parents to send their children back, Mr Johnson declared in a sombre address from No10 that primary and secondary schools will be shut from today, with only the vulnerable and offspring of key workers allowed to go in.
Nurseries can stay open. But university students are being told to stay at home and study remotely, while GCSE and A-level exams will not go ahead as planned.
Teenagers might not know for weeks how their exams will be replaced, with Ofsted expected to launch a consultation, although government sources said some ‘contingency’ plans had already been considered.
Under the the new guidance, published overnight, non-essential retail, all hospitality, gyms and swimming pools will be ordered to close – with Rishi Sunak due to lay out another package of support today amid growing fears about the impact on the economy.
Cafes, bars and restaurants will be allowed to serve takeaway – but in a tightening from the draconian measures last spring, they will not be allowed to serve any alcohol. Vulnerable people are being told to shield where possible.
The public will once again only be allowed to leave home for one of five reasons: to go to work if essential, shop for necessities, exercise – allowed with one other person from another household, care for someone, or to seek medical help or flee threat such as domestic violence.
Communal worship can continue with social distancing in place.
Those who break the rules face a £200 for the first offence, doubling for further offences up to a maximum of £6,400.
The extraordinary third national squeeze will come into effect in the early hours tomorrow after the regulations are laid today, but Mr Johnson urged the public to adopt the new rules now. MPs will get a vote on them on Wednesday when Parliament is recalled.
Senior Tory MPs had joined the Opposition in calling for the introduction of another national lockdown. But the idea of hardening the restrictions sparked fury from other Conservatives, who insist the country’s experience of the pandemic shows that lockdowns do not work and are crippling the economy.
There are claims that at least two MPs have now sent letters of no confidence in the PM to Conservative backbench chief Sir Graham Brady – although the numbers are nowhere near the threshold to put his position in doubt.
With his hands clasped together and seated behind a desk in Downing Street last night, Mr Johnson made clear there is no chance of them being lifted for at least seven weeks – and possibly longer if the vaccine rollout does not go well.
‘Our hospitals are under more pressure than at any time since the start of the pandemic. It’s clear we need to do more.. while our vaccines are rolled out,’ he said.
He said it would not be ‘possible or fair’ for exams to go ahead this summer as normal.
‘The weeks ahead will be the hardest but I really do believe that we are reaching the end of the struggle,’ he said, pledging that by mid-February the top four categories on the vaccine distribution list will have had their first jabs.
There are 13.2million people in the top four groups on the vaccination list – care home residents and the over-80s, frontline healthcare workers, the over-70s and the clinically vulnerable.
But the Prime Minister admitted that he could only give assurance that the situation will improve assuming that ‘our understanding of the virus does not change again’.
He said: ‘By the middle of February, if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails, we expect to have offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
‘That means vaccinating all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, everyone over the age of 70, all frontline health and social care workers, and everyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable.
‘If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus.
‘And of course, that will eventually enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long.’
Mr Johnson said he was left with no option after being confronted with catastrophic figures about the burden on the NHS by science chiefs today.
Hospital patients with coronavirus had risen by 40 per cent over a week, and are now higher than at the peak of the first wave.
As England gets used to the idea of a third national lockdown and months more coronavirus chaos:
- Rishi Sunak today announced another £4.6billion of bailouts for lockdown-stricken businesses as economists warned of the ‘colossal’ hit from the surging pandemic;
- Arrivals at UK borders are set to have to show they have tested negative for Covid in the last 72 hours in another major U-turn from government;
- Police have warned that enforcing the lockdown will be difficult with large numbers of officers already off sick or self-isolating;
- Scientists have warned that even the new tough measures might not be enough to contain the mutant coronavirus strain;
- The PM is set to hold a press conference with medical and science chiefs Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance at 5pm;
- Streets and city centres were quiet as Britons digested the new restrictions being placed on their lives;
- Hundreds of medical professionals have called for hospital staff to be given higher grade personal protective equipment (PPE) amid growing concern over airborne transmission of coronavirus;
- The scale of the problem was underlined as the latest grim daily tally was released, with 58,784 new cases – a 42 per cent rise on last Monday.
Downing Street issued a series of slides showing the problem the country faces due to the new variant of the virus – the evidence that apparently forced Mr Johnson into his latest extraordinary U-turn
Hundreds of thousands of non-essential retailers will have to keep their doors closed under England’s third nation-wide lockdown
Michael Gove (left) admitted there was no ‘certainty’ that the brutal squeeze imposed by Boris Johnson (pictured right after his run this morning) will be eased at the end of February as hoped
The Joint Biosecurity Centre has recommended today that the Covid-19 alert level be reduced
Rishi Sunak today announced another £4.6billion of bailouts for lockdown-stricken businesses as economists warned of the ‘colossal’ hit from the surging pandemic.
The Chancellor declared that venues hammered by Boris Johnson‘s dramatic decision will get one-off grants of up to £9,000 to keep them afloat over the next seven weeks.
Some 600,000 premises across the UK are set to receive the cash, while another £594million is being pumped into a ‘discretionary fund’ to support other firms affected.
Mr Sunak also pointedly refused to rule out extending the massive furlough scheme again beyond the end of April, merely saying he would ‘take stock’ at the Budget in March.
However, businesses warned that the package is not enough, amid pressure for VAT and rates relief to be kept in place to stop a wave of bankruptcies.
The latest huge intervention came amid fears that the lockdown will slash GDP by up to 10 per cent in every month it is imposed – although the respected IFS think-tank said this morning that the impact might be lower as businesses have adapted since the first squeeze in March.
It will also raise alarm at the state of the government’s finances, with IFS director Paul Johnson saying the scale of the economic damage was the worst ‘in the whole of history’. Public sector borrowing could hit £400billion this year, with Mr Sunak already having warned of a reckoning later to balance the books.
In his speech to the nation, the Prime Minister said the previous tiers would have been enough to cope with Covid as it was originally, but the new variant – which is 50 per cent to 70 per cent more transmissible – was spreading in a ‘frustrating and alarming’ manner.
‘As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from Covid than at any time since the start of the pandemic,’ he said.
Mr Johnson said that in England the number of Covid patients in hospitals has increased by nearly a third in the last week to almost 27,000 – some 40 per cent higher than the first peak in April.
On December 29 ‘more than 80,000 people tested positive for Covid across the UK’, the number of deaths is up by 20 per cent over the last week ‘and will sadly rise further’.
‘With most of the country, or maybe under extreme measures, it’s clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out,’ he said.
‘In England we must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant.’
Mr Johnson said parents ‘may reasonably ask why’ decisions on schools were not taken ‘sooner’.
‘The answer is simply that we’ve been doing everything in our power to keep schools open because we know how important each day in education is to children’s life chances,’ he said.
‘And I want to stress that the problem is not that schools are unsafe for children. Children are still very unlikely to be severely affected by even the new variant of Covid.
‘The problem is that schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.’
Mr Johnson said the move on schools means ‘it’s not possible or fair for all exams to go ahead this summer, as normal’.
The PM added: ‘We will provide extra support to ensure that pupils entitled to free school meals will continue to receive them while schools are closed, and we will distribute more devices to support remote education.’
The premier suggested England could ‘steadily’ move out of lockdown from mid-February – but he heavily caveated his optimism, in a sign that the crisis could drag on much longer.
‘If our understanding of the virus doesn’t change dramatically, once again, if the rollout of the vaccine programme continues to be successful, if deaths start to fall as the vaccine takes effect and – critically – if everyone plays their part by following the rules, then I hope we can steadily move out of lockdown, reopening schools after the February half-term and starting cautiously to move regions down the tiers,’ Mr Johnson said.
‘I must stress that even if we achieve this goal, there remains a time lag of two to three weeks from getting a jab to receiving immunity.
‘And there will be a further time lag before the pressure on the NHS is lifted. So we should remain cautious about the timetable ahead.’
He rounded off his downbeat address by repeating the mantra from the first lockdown, ’stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives’.
‘I want to say to everyone right across the UK that I know how tough this is,’ he said.
‘And I know how frustrated you are and I know that you have had more than enough of Government guidance about defeating this virus.
‘But now, more than ever, we must pull together.’
He warned that ‘the weeks ahead will be the hardest yet’ but ‘with every jab that goes into our arms, we are tilting the odds against Covid and in favour of the British people’.
‘Thanks to the miracle of science not only is the end in sight but we know exactly how we will get there.’
Even the Scilly Isles has not escaped, shifting from Tier 1 straight to full lockdown.
In a round of interviews, Mr Gove said a review of the situation would happen in the February half-term.
‘We hope we will be able to progressively lift restrictions after that but what I can’t do is predict – nobody can predict – with accuracy exactly what we will be able to relax and when,’ he told Sky News.
‘What we do know is that the more effective our vaccination programme, the more people who are protected in that way, the easier it will be to lift these restrictions.’
Despite the ferocity of the new measures, scientists warned they still might not be enough to control the Covid variant.
Andrew Hayward, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at University College London, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the move ‘will clearly save tens of thousands of lives’.
But he added: ‘The threat we’re facing is at least as bad as we were back in March.
‘I think the virus is different and it may be that the lockdown measures we had are not enough so we need to learn from the new insights and new technologies, we need to learn from the last lockdown and particularly some of the things we saw.
‘I think this time round we really need to use this lockdown to bear down on the virus in a way that can protect key workers – for example, we could be using the lateral flow (tests) and working with employers to offer regular testing to key workers.’
Meanwhile, police warned that enforcing the new national lockdown would put ‘a lot of pressure’ on officers whose numbers are already reduced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation – which represents front line officers in London, said some 1,300 were off sick or self-isolating in the capital.
His counterpart nationally, John Apter, wrote in the Daily Telegraph some forces were reporting 15 per cent of their staff off sick or self-isolating.
Mr Marsh urged the Government to place police officers on a priority list to receive coronavirus vaccines, saying requests to the Government so far were ‘falling on deaf ears’.
Businesses voiced dismay at the new clampdown that threatens to wreak more havoc on the economy.
British Chambers of Commerce director general Adam Marshall said: ‘Businesses will understand why the Prime Minister has felt compelled to act on the spiralling threat to public health, but they will be baffled and disappointed by the fact that he did not announce additional support for affected businesses alongside these new restrictions.’
Asked about how lockdown enforcement would affect officers, Mr Marsh said: ‘It will obviously create a lot of pressure on us because we have a lot more officers off this time than we did back in March.
‘Our numbers have rocketed in terms of officers with Covid and officers isolating and we envisage that getting worse.
‘So the pressure is on my colleagues who are still out there to maintain the same level that they did before.’
Commenting on getting officers access to vaccines, he claimed: ‘It would appear that policing has been airbrushed out of any conversation in relation to protecting my colleagues, which I find quite incredible considering they are on the front line.
‘They are the one group of people other than the National Health Service that actually have to go to work and have to be out there with the public, every day, 24 hours a day.
‘It’s just amazing that no consideration whatsoever has been given to vaccinating police.’
Mr Apter, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, has called for officers to be prioritised after society’s most vulnerable groups and NHS workers have been given the jab.
He wrote in the Telegraph: ‘Without the vaccine, there is a real danger that more officers will contract the virus.
‘As growing numbers self-isolate or report sick with the virus, then the police service begins to struggle to do what the public fully expects of it.
‘Some forces are already starting to report up to 15 per cent of their officers off sick or self-isolating. This is getting worse and is simply not sustainable.’
Mr Apter, whose organisation represents 130,000 officers, said the ‘last thing the public want is to call 999 in their hour of need, only to find we are too short of officers to be able to respond’.
Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, said: ‘A third lockdown is yet another blow to our sector. Particularly after it has faced an abysmally quiet Christmas and New Year’s, which saw many pubs remain closed over what is meant to be their busiest time of the year.
‘The announcement today adds to the woes of pubs as it shows they are a long way from reopening properly. The road to recovery for the pub sector just got longer.’
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the Government should have gone further by extending the rules on wearing face masks to cover busy outdoor areas and toughening up controls at the borders.
‘This announcement by the Government of a full national lockdown was inevitable,’ Mr Khan said.
‘It is unclear why it took Boris Johnson so long to reach this conclusion.’
The latest infection tally meant the UK has passed the milestone of 50,000 infections every day for a week, suggesting that the easing of restrictions at Christmas helped fuel the outbreak.
Department of Health chiefs also posted 407 more deaths, up just 14 per cent on the figure recorded last week.
But it can take infected patients several weeks to fall severely ill and succumb to the illness, meaning fatalities have yet to reach their peak and will continue to rise.
The UK recorded almost 1,000 deaths twice last week, in grisly tolls not seen since the darkest days of the spring.
Nicola Sturgeon announced a drastic crackdown in the Scottish Parliament on Monday afternoon, with a legally-enforced stay at home order from midnight and schools north of the border set to stay closed until February.
Mr Johnson confirmed yesterday morning that ‘tougher’ measures were coming despite the optimism sparked by the first Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses being administered – although at that point he appeared to hint he would prefer to stick with the Tier system in England.
Streets and city centres were quiet as Britons digested the new restrictions being placed on their lives. PIctured, Waterloo station in London
Traffic was relatively light in many parts of London this morning, although the new rules have yet to come into force legally. Pictured, the A40 Marylebone flyover heading into central London
SAGE had cautioned that it is probably impossible to control the new coronavirus variant while they remain open – although experts say a total shutdown still might not be enough to bring the ‘R’ reproduction rate below one.
Michael Gove held a conference call with the First Ministers from the four nations to coordinate strategies. But in a sign of splits, Wales has said it will push ahead with reopening schools over the next fortnight unless there is new evidence about the variant strain.
Earlier, ex-health secretary Jeremy Hunt joined demands from Labour and Tory MPs for an immediate national squeeze with schools and borders shut and a ban on all household mixing.
Mr Hunt warned that mutant Covid has put the NHS under ‘off the scale’ pressure compared to normal winters and the government ‘cannot afford to wait’ even one more day.
Mr Hunt posted on Twitter: ‘To those arguing winter is always like this in the NHS: you are wrong. I faced four serious winter crises as Health Sec and the situation now is off-the-scale worse than any of those.’
Mr Hunt said the ‘No1 lesson’ from the pandemic is that countries can ‘save lives and get their economies back to normal faster’ if they ‘act early and decisively’.
‘We therefore cannot afford to wait: all schools should be closed, international travel stopped, household mixing limited and the tier system reviewed so that the highest tier really does bring down infection levels,’ Mr Hunt said.
‘The good news is that unlike before these restrictions will be time limited to the 12 weeks or so it will take to get the vaccine out to those most vulnerable to covid – so there is light at the end of the tunnel.’
Mr Hunt was among a growing band of Conservative MPs, including ex-No10 adviser Neil O’Brien, urging emergency steps to tackle the coronavirus surge.
Labour has also been pushing for a squeeze, with Sadiq Khan saying Mr Hunt was ‘spot on’.
Earlier Matt Hancock suggested the first step will be to escalate even more of the country into Tier 4, saying Tier 3 did not seem able to hold back the more infectious version of the deadly disease.
He insisted the problem was partly down to people failing to obey the rules, amid calls from some MPs for police to be given more powers.
But there were questions about how much more impact extending the coverage of Tier 4 could have, given three-quarters of England is already subject to the harshest bracket, where only essential shops such as supermarkets are allowed to open and people are meant to stay at home.
Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director for Public Health England (PHE), said the latest daily figures were a ‘bitter warning’ about the threat.