More than one million people in the UK now have Covid as the number of people who have tested positive hit a record 60,916 cases in one day.
The number of new daily confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK topped 60,000 for the first time since the pandemic started as Scotland and England entered the first day of new lockdowns.
Startling figures from the Office of National Statistics, showing that two per cent of the population in England could be infected, were described by chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty as “really quite a large number indeed”.
Tuesday was the eighth consecutive day the UK has recorded more than 50,000 daily cases, with 830 more deaths.
In Scotland 2529 positive cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, with eleven deaths.
Nicola Sturgeon said that the new virulent strain of coronavirus is responsible for around 50 per cent of the total.
Boris Johnson told a Downing Street press conference that lockdown restrictions could be lifted again by the middle of February, when the most vulnerable people will have been vaccinated.
He said: “Then there really is the prospect of relaxing some of these measures”.
The Prime Minister said that 1.3 million people in the UK have now received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
He told a press conference the figures including 1.1 million in England and 650,000 people over the age of 80.
The Prime Minister said: “That means nearly one-in-four of the most vulnerable groups will have in two to three weeks a significant degree of immunity,” he said.
He added: “That is why I believe the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was right to draw up a programme saving the most lives the fastest.”
To reach the target of vaccinating 13 million people in the next six weeks the UK has to vaccinate almost two million a week.
The Prime Minister promised to issue daily figures on the number of vaccinations.
Johnson said “things will be very different by the spring” but he could not promise with confidence that children will be back in school before the summer holidays.
The PM added: “But you will also appreciate there are a lot of caveats, a lot of ifs built into that, the most important of which is that we all now follow the guidance.”
