PM: Second lockdown is 'last thing anybody wants' but current measures to be kept 'under review'

Parts of West Yorkshire which had previously been lifted out of local restrictions will be put back under a ban on socialising at home from Tuesday, amid fears over growing rates.

It means around 13.5m people will be under some sort of restrictions relating to coronavirus.

And while Health Secretary Matt Hancock said a national lockdown is the “last line of defence”, he added it had not been ruled out, with the “great hope” that people will heed current advice to help manage a “very serious” situation.

He said: “We want to avoid a national lockdown but we’re prepared to do it, if we need to.”

New confirmed daily cases of coronavirus hit 4,322 today – the highest since May 8 - and cases of the virus and hospital admissions for Covid-19 are doubling every seven to eight days in the UK, according to the new data.

Yvonne Doyle, medical director at Public Health England, said: “This could be a warning of far worse things to come.”

On a visit to the Jenner Institute in Oxford today, where a coronavirus vaccine is being developed, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his administration was considering whether it needed to “go further” than the current national restrictions that were put in place this week.

Asked about the possibility of a two-week October half-term in order to bring in a short lockdown, Mr Johnson told reporters: “What I can certainly say about parents and schools is we want to keep the schools open, that is going to happen.

“We want to try and keep all parts of the economy open as far as we possibly can – I don’t think anybody wants to go into a second lockdown but clearly when you look at what is happening, you have got to wonder whether we need to go further than the ‘rule of six’ that we have brought in on Monday, so we will be looking at the local lockdowns we have got in large parts of the country now, looking at what we can do to intensify things that help bring the rate of infection down there, but also looking at other measures as well.

“What I will say is, as we go forward, we will be explaining in great detail to people what the scientific background is, what the epidemiology is saying and really how we propose to do it.”