England will face nearly a month of lockdown to stop Covid-19 infections soaring if it takes the five days being mooted by officials where restrictions will be relaxed to allow people to spend time with their families over Christmas.
A senior health official warned that for each day with looser restrictions, five days of lockdown would be needed to stop the spread of the virus.
Susan Hopkins, deputy director of the national infections service at Public Health England, told reporters on Wednesday that the advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies would mean two days of tighter restrictions.
However, Public Health England, the government agency responsible for responding to public health emergencies, later clarified that Ms Hopkins had misspoken, and that “for every one day of relaxation, five days of tighter restrictions would potentially be needed.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to ease lockdown restrictions on December 2 after a month-long lockdown imposed to stop a second wave of infections threatening the health service. He said two weeks ago that he hoped that Christmas could be as normal as possible.
The government is considering rules relaxing lockdown for between three and five days to allow family get-togethers, The Sun reported on Wednesday.
This would mean that the country could see 25 days of further restrictions for spending five days with family members or friends outside their household over the festive period.
The UK registered another 529 coronavirus deaths and 19,609 more cases over the last day.
Both figures are slightly less than Tuesday - with the number of new reported fatalities down by 69 and infections by 442.
But they bring the total number of deaths to 53,274 and cases to 1,430,341 since the pandemic began.
