Covid: Johnson rules out immediately introducing new restrictions but warns Government won't hesitate to take further action

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ruled out immediately implementing new coronavirus restrictions but said the Government would not hesitate to take further action, adding that they were monitoring the data hour by hour.

He said: “Please exercise caution as you go about your lives.”

A total of 51,498,034 first doses of Covid-19 vaccine had been delivered in the UK by December 19, Government figures show. This is a rise of 33,151 on the previous day.

Some 47,051,876 second doses have been delivered, an increase of 39,904.

A combined total of 28,978,244 booster and third doses have also been given, a day-on-day rise of 846,466.

Mr Johnson, asked about the prospect of new restrictions including on the hospitality sector, told reporters: “We are looking at all kinds of things to keep Omicron under control and we will rule nothing out.

“But at the moment what I think we want people to focus on is exercising caution so ventilation, masks in the appropriate places, all the usual stuff about washing hands, but remember how contagious Omicron really is.

“I think what you’re seeing already is the British public understanding that and you can see in people’s patterns of behaviour since we went to Plan B that they are changing the way they go about their lives, they are changing some of the assumptions they make about the things that they want to do.”

He went on to say the arguments for taking action in the face of the spread of Omicron were “very, very finely balanced”.

“We have got cases of Omicron surging across the country now. We have got hospital admissions rising quite steeply in London and the obvious conclusion is that it was right to go fast with Plan B in the way that we did and also right to double the speed of the booster rollout,” he said.

“In view of the balance of risks and uncertainties, particularly around the infection, hospitalisation rate of Omicron – how many people does Omicron put in hospital – and some other uncertainties to do with the severity, the effectiveness and so on we agreed that we should keep the data from now on under constant review.”