'No more Covid restrictions planned before Christmas Day', says health minister

Ms Keegan said the threat of having to isolate over Christmas is “bound to make people a bit more cautious” in the run-up to the big day but denied the Government has imposed a lockdown by stealth.

“Everybody is urging caution," she said.

"Most of us will know somebody now who’s positive with Covid, and that means if you’ve tested positive, then you’ll be in isolation over Christmas. So that’s bound to make people a bit more cautious.”

She said: “Make a sensible choice for yourself, make a sensible choice. You know, if you’re going to go to a party, take a test. If there’s lots of people there you don’t know, if that’s your priority, fine. If your priority is to make it through to Christmas Day with your family then take a different approach.

“Everybody’s got different pros and cons, you know, so make a sensible decision but definitely wear a mask and definitely, you know, make sure that you take a test beforehand and also try to go to well-ventilated places as well.”

She said Boris Johnson “won’t hesitate” to recall Parliament if he needed to bring in extra measures.

Ms Keegan said she recognised the promise to offer everyone a booster jab by the end of the year was a “very stretching target”.

But she told Sky News that she could guarantee the pledge.

Asked if she was confident it would be met, she said: “Yes, I think the one thing I’m confident about… is they can meet big targets, the infrastructure’s there, the logistics are there, obviously the Army’s coming in to help, masses of volunteers are coming in to help.”

Professor Andrew Hayward, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told BBC Breakfast “only about half or maybe even fewer of people who do have Covid ever get tested”.

Speaking in a personal capacity, he said the doubling rate of Omicron would lead to an “extraordinary number of cases” and “a huge wave of infection”.

He added: “If you think about getting a year’s worth of rain over a month, then you’re going to get flooding and potentially severe flooding, no matter how much you’ve shored up your defences.

“And that’s the concern here – that that huge wave is going to cause lots of people to be off work having to isolate, which is going to cause disruption, and it’s going to spill over into people going into hospital.

“Now the rate at which it spills over is uncertain because we don’t know exactly how severe it is yet, but we’ve no particular reason to think that it’s less severe than previous strains.

“We know that Covid is always going to be less severe if you’ve been immunised but it may be that rather than the strain itself that’s making a lot of cases look less severe.”

He said more data should come around Christmas time or in the new year on severity, but added: “The trouble is, if you wait until then and don’t do anything to reduce the spread, then you’re in a much worse situation than if you take some action now.”

Asked about whether current restrictions are geared towards Christmas, Prof Hayward told BBC Breakfast: “We know that the correct thing to do is always a balance between the impact on the economy, the impact on people’s social lives and the impact on the virus and subsequent hospitalisations.

“And so of course, in some ways that balance is slightly different at Christmas because so many people a, their income is dependent on commerce around Christmas time, particularly the hospitality sector and shops, and b, people want to socialise, so that you know the balance is different and it’s always a balance.

“However, I think the scale of the potential problem that we’re looking at here does mean that we need to bite the bullet and we need to tell people that there’s two really important things here.

“One is to get boosted, the other if we want to slow it down now… Then what we need to do is reduce the number of contacts that we have, we need to avoid crowded spaces with lots of people in and unfortunately, yes, that does mean parties etc. And so that’s a difficult message.”

Prof Hayward said he believed the communication in Scotland had been clearer than in England.

Asked if he felt the science was not being followed, he said scientists “set out what’s likely to happen, what some of the options are in order to reduce that, and it’s up to the Government’s to balance those.”

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