Boris Johnson has refused to say whether he will enforce a third national lockdown after Christmas, saying only that the rates of infection have increased “very much” in the last few weeks.

The PM was asked on a visit to Greater Manchester whether England would follow Northern Ireland in imposing stringent restrictions after the festive period.

“We’re hoping very much that we will be able to avoid anything like that,” he said, adding: “But the reality is that the rates of infection have increased very much in the last few weeks.”

Mr Johnson was observing workers at the pole field at the Openreach L and D Training Centre in Bolton on Friday. 

The President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said we must do “whatever it takes” to get coronavirus cases under control.

Asked if a lockdown needs to be announced for England and Scotland following similar announcements in Wales and Northern Ireland, Dr Katherine Henderson said: “I don’t really care what the terminology is, all I know is that we need to do something to get ourselves suppressing the community transmission of the virus.

“It seems to me we need to do whatever it takes to get the situation firmly under control so that we can vaccinate people and then move forward.”

She said the difference between the current situation and the one in March is that hospitals are still trying to carry on with all their non-Covid work while dealing with a rise in patients with the virus.

“We’ve got a real perfect storm going at the moment of lack of beds, a big wave of Covid patients and a desperate attempt to try and carry on doing (non-Covid) work,” she said.

She urged the public to be “incredibly careful” over the festive period, adding: “Just don’t make anything more risky than it needs to be.”

A headteachers’ union has said it will not be possible to recruit and train all the volunteers needed to carry out Covid-19 tests for students, following the government’s announcement that secondary school and college pupils’ return to class in England will be staggered in the first week of January to help headteachers roll out mass testing.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said the tests will be administered by volunteers and agency staff, rather than teachers, and further details on how it will work will be published next week – when most schools are closed for Christmas.

Volunteers carrying out rapid Covid-19 tests in schools in January will not need a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check because they will be “supervised” by staff, Mr Gibb told LBC.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), told the PA news agency: “The plans outlined at the last minute by the Government for mass testing in schools and colleges from the start of the spring term are undeliverable in that timescale, and it is beyond belief that they were landed on school and college leaders in such a cack-handed manner.

“It is not possible to recruit and train all the people needed to carry out tests, and put in place the processes that would be necessary, over the Christmas period, and it is extremely regrettable that the Government has given the public an expectation that this will happen.”

It comes as Mr Gibb appeared on BBC Breakfast on Friday morning to say he and the government were “sure that 11 million lateral flow tests will be available in schools”.

A third national lockdown for England cannot be ruled out after Christmas, one of Boris Johnson’s ministers has said – amid warnings tier 3 measures will not be enough to hold back the “wave” of Covid cases.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said “we rule nothing out” when asked about the possibility of moving into another shutdown if there was a marked rise in Covid cases after the five-day holiday relaxation of the rules.

My colleague Adam Forrest reports:

The ONS survey (see post from 10.13am) also showed that over half (55 per cent) of households planned to stay at home this Christmas. This compared to 48 per cent of adults saying they had done this during last year’s Christmas and New Year period.

A lower proportion of adults reported planning various social activities with their family and friends this Christmas compared to last year, the ONS said.

This included 26 per cent of people saying they planned to visit family and friends but not stay overnight compared with 52 per cent last year; 19 per cent saying family and friends planned to visit but not stay overnight compared with 39 per cent last year; 11 per cent said they were planning to stay overnight with family and friends compared with 28 per cent last year; and 10 per cent saying they planned to have family and friends stay overnight compared with 21 per cent last year.

Only four per cent of people said they planned on meeting up in restaurants, cafes or bars over this festive period compared with 44 per cent who said they had done this last year, the ONS added.

Here’s a reminder of all the Christmas rules:

Fifty per cent of adults across the country said they were planning to form a Christmas bubble, according to new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This compared to 38 per cent who said they were not planning to form a bubble over the festive period and 12 per cent who said they did not know, according to an ONS survey between 10-13 December.

The survey also showed that just over half (56 per cent) of adults in Great Britain reported they felt it was very easy or easy to understand rules for forming a Christmas bubble.

The ONS said this understanding seemed to increase with age, with 48 per cent of those aged between 16 and 29 reporting this, compared with 55 per cent of adults aged 30 to 49, 58 per cent of 50 to 69-year-olds and 61 per cent of people aged 70 years and over.

A damning parliamentary report into the UK’s handling of coronavirus has found “a striking absence of leadership” left the country unprepared for the pandemic, political editor Andrew Woodcock reports.

The report by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy said Covid-19 had exposed “profound shortcomings” in the government’s efforts to protect the UK against biosecurity hazards.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had sleepless nights while trying to develop a coronavirus jab.

“I didn’t have doubts about what it is we were doing. The doubts I had in the early parts of the year were about our ability as a university to actually bring this off,” she said.

“Because it is not what a university would normally do. And I think that all worked because we had so many people within the university who really wanted this to work and were prepared to come together and form a large team.

“At the start of the year I did have sleepless nights, wondering what it was that we haven’t thought about – what problem was going to trip us up, because nobody had realised that we needed to do it, but, actually, that never happened. Somebody had always thought of everything.”