Covid-19: No guarantees on new restrictions - Sajid Javid

The health secretary has refused to rule out further Covid restrictions for England, as the Omicron variant spreads around the country.

A further 10,000 Omicron cases were confirmed in the UK yesterday and a major incident was declared in London, where cases are highest.

Asked about possible new rules to slow the spread, Sajid Javid said there were "no guarantees in this pandemic".

And he described warnings from scientific advisers as "sobering".

When it was suggested to him he was not ruling out a circuit-breaker or new restrictions before Christmas, Mr Javid told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "There are no guarantees in this pandemic, I don't think.

"At this point we just have to keep everything under review."

A further 90,418 daily Covid cases were reported across the UK on Saturday, after days of record highs.

And leaked notes from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (Sage) suggest that, without intervention beyond current Plan B rules in England, hospital admissions could reach 3,000 a day.

On those notes, Mr Javid said: "It's a very sobering analysis. We take it very seriously."

However, he added: "We do have to challenge data and underlying assumptions, I think that is appropriate, and take into account a broader set of facts."

Current Plan B rules for England include Covid passes for certain events, face masks in more places and people being urged to work from home if they can.

Other nations of the UK have similar rules - and Scotland has gone further by asking people to limit social contact to three households at a time in the run-up to Christmas.

Wales has also ordered nightclubs to close from 27 December.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan told the BBC it was "inevitable" new coronavirus measures would be brought in for England.

"I think if we don't bring in new restrictions sooner rather than later, you're going to see even more positive cases and potentially public services like the NHS on the verge of collapse, if not collapsing," he said.

"I think we should be able to celebrate Christmas safely. But I think sooner rather than later we're going to look at social distancing, we're going to have to look at household mixing.

"If we don't, the number of cases is only going one way."

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Javid said ministers were monitoring the data and discussing it with scientists "almost on an hourly basis".

He confirmed that if new measures were to be proposed, Parliament would be recalled to approve them, describing that approach as "only right and proper".

The health secretary's comments come exactly a year after Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed Christmas restrictions on almost 18 million people across London and parts of England, in the face of the spread of the Alpha variant, which had been first identified in Kent.

But Mr Javid said current factors including vaccinations and antiviral medication meant "the situation today in terms of our defences is very different".

More than 800,000 booster doses were reported for the second consecutive day on Saturday, with 817,625 third jabs.

It means more than 27 million people in the UK have now had their third or booster dose.

Saturday's data - which included the second-highest number of cases since mass testing began last year - also saw another 125 deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive test, down slightly on a week ago.

The UK Health Security Agency said that, so far, seven people with Omicron have died in England.