Boris Johnson says he is "hoping to avoid" another national lockdown in England but admits Covid cases have increased "very much" in recent weeks.

Health bosses have warned the NHS is already under significant pressure.

The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Katherine Henderson, said England and Scotland needed to do "whatever it takes" to get a grip of the virus, even if that meant "full lockdown".

Meanwhile, the R number - which represents how many people each infected person passes the virus onto - has risen above 1 in the UK.

The latest figure, calculated by the government's scientific advisers, is estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.2, up from between 0.9 and 1 last week.

Official figures show Covid-19 cases have risen in the past week in England, driven by sharp increases in London, as well as rises in the South East and East Midlands.

Asked whether England would end up following Northern Ireland and Wales into lockdown, Mr Johnson said: "Obviously we are hoping very much that we'll be able to avoid anything like that, but the reality is that the rates of infection have increased in the last few weeks."

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said "nobody wants a third lockdown" but England's tiered system was "not strong enough".

The UK's R - or reproduction - number is now estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.2, meaning the coronavirus epidemic is growing once again.

Covid-19 cases have risen to an estimated 660,000 infections across the UK between 6-12 December.

Roughly one in every 95 people had the virus across Britain last week.

The previous week's figures suggested about 560,000 people had the virus across the UK - one in 115 people in England, one in 120 in Scotland, one in 175 in Wales and one in 235 in Northern Ireland.

So weekly cases have gone up by about a fifth.

The percentage of NHS hospital beds which are occupied is increasing and has reached almost 89% in England for the week ending December 13.

This is the highest occupancy rate so far this year - it's still lower than the same time last year, although the extra burden of Covid is likely to make hospitals feel they are much busier.

A safe level for bed occupancy is below 90% but nearly half of NHS trusts report a figure currently higher than this - the largest proportion this season.

The south and east of England are facing the most pressure on beds. Trusts in and around London make up most of the busiest ranked by beds occupied - all of the top 10 are over 95%, with three running even higher at over 97%.

Dr Nick Scriven, immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said he suspected "many, many trusts" had already cancelled routine clinics or procedures to try to free up staff for the challenges of winter.

Pressure on hospitals 'at a really dangerous point'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55362681



What happened to the Nightingales .....

Shortage of staff, a current problem in the NHS generally, see link below:

https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/co...gs-12-10-2020/

Thanks .....

..... and that report was back in October - I assume that the staffing situation has not improved .....

Boris should immediately stop this 5 days of Christmas nonsense expecting the British public to rely on their common sense is ridiculous. Yes some will but there are a minority that wont .