The Prime Minister will hold a press conference at 5pm on Wednesday (December 15) to give an update on the situation with the Omicron variant of coronavirus, Downing Street has confirmed.
Boris Johnson is expected to update the country on the progress of the booster jab programme.
It is understood he will not be announcing any further coronavirus measures.
The Prime Minister will be accompanied at the podium at 5pm by Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty and the NHS England's Dr Nikki Kanani.
And it comes as Communities Secretary Michael Gove will chair a Cobra meeting with the devolved administrations on Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting will also take place at around 5pm with representatives of the Scottish and Welsh Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive.
Meanwhile UK Health Security Agency chief Jenny Harries warned the NHS could be in “serious peril” because of the Omicron wave.
Defending the testing regime for travel, Dr Harries told the Commons Transport Committee: “Trying to prevent ingress of any infections, including Omicron, still remains a key point, particularly when we can foresee a very large wave of Omicron coming through and our health services potentially being in serious peril."
Dr Harries said “the real risk” of Omicron is that “there are so many unusual mutations on this virus”.
She went on: “It runs the risk of evading our natural and/or vaccine immunity.
“We have early studies looking at immune serum from patients who’ve been ill and been vaccinated, to see that two doses of vaccine against symptomatic infection – so we don’t know yet about severe disease but about symptomatic infection – is much reduced.
“We do know that the booster dose will push that right back up but it still comes back to a level below that that we’ve had with the booster effect for Delta, our previous wave.”
She added that the strain “could have very significant impact on our health services”.
To sign up for the Nottinghamshire Live newsletter click here
