Boris Johnson has insisted he was right to stick with England’s Plan B coronavirus measures despite rapidly rising hospital admissions, soaring case rates and staff shortages hitting the NHS.
The restrictions will be reviewed again before they are scheduled to expire on January 26.
Plan B measures include wider use of face masks and guidance to work from home.
He also confirmed plans being implemented across the UK to end the requirement for confirmatory PCR tests for asymptomatic people who test positive using a lateral flow device (LFD).
The changes in testing procedures are aimed at freeing up laboratory capacity for PCR tests, with the requirement for confirmatory tests suspended in asymptomatic people until the current high levels of infections subside.
The change was being introduced in Northern Ireland on Wednesday, Scotland and Wales on Thursday and in England from January 11.
An estimated 3.7 million people in the UK had Covid-19 in the week ending December 31, up from 2.3 million in the week to December 23 and the highest number since comparable figures began in autumn 2020, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
In England around one in 15 people in private households had Covid-19, according to ONS estimates – a level rising to one in 10 in London.
A further 194,747 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the UK as of 9am on Wednesday, while 334 more deaths were recorded – although this figure includes a backlog of hospital data from England since January 1.
Government figures also showed a total of 17,276 people were in hospital in the UK with Covid-19 as of January 4, up 58% week-on-week – although far below the peak of almost 40,000 in January 2021.
In the Commons, Mr Johnson said hospital admissions were “doubling around every nine days” and “we’re experiencing the fastest growth in Covid cases we’ve ever known”.
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