Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference alongside England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance at 5pm, No 10 said.
The address is likely to include mention of the 16 countries which saw travel to the UK banned from today.
There could also be an announcement on how long the lockdown will last - as Wales is set to review rules there on January 29.
And there will be discussion of tougher lockdown rules, which have been reported as on the table this week.
The Government is also about to unveil a new Covid ad campaign.
Downing Street said it acted “as quickly as possible” to impose the ban on travellers from South America, with the concerning Brazilian strain possibly posing a “significant risk to the UK”.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “It’s obviously right that we continue to look at different variants and take action accordingly.
“As soon as we identified this variant our teams were quickly working on this and, given that we know this could pose a significant risk to the UK, we acted as quickly as possible, which is why you’ve seen this travel ban from those countries enacted quickly.”
Downing Street has said Public Health England (PHE) leads on identifying new coronavirus variants in the nation.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “It’s PHE that’s working hard to identify cases. You can expect an update from them on this later today.
“It’s right given that they do the work that they lead on this.”
Downing Street has said evidence currently suggests that the concerning new Brazilian variant of coronavirus may be more transmissible but does not affect vaccines.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that scientists at the Government’s Porton Down research facility are investigating the new strain.
“As with some of the other variants we’ve seen, the Kent variant and the South Africa variant, evidence does suggest that it may be more transmissible,” he added.
“More research is required to confirm this and Porton Down will conduct that research but current evidence does not suggest that the strain causes any higher mortality rate or that it affects the vaccines or treatments.”
