A NATIONAL lockdown in England which will see the closure of pubs, restaurants, entertainment venues and non-essential shops come into force in England from Thursday, November 5 until Wednesday December 2, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

The Prime Minister held a press conference this evening (Saturday) with chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance in the wake of rising coronavirus infection rates across the country.

The NHS will be overwhelmed within weeks without a national lockdown in England, Mr Johnson warned, as he ordered the country to stay at home in a bid to reverse the spread of coronavirus.

The Prime Minister said that without action, deaths would reach “several thousand a day”, with a “peak of mortality” worse than the country saw during the lockdown in April.

Pubs, bars, restaurants and non-essential retail across the nation will close from Thursday, and people will be told to stay at home unless they have a specific reason to leave, but schools, colleges and nurseries will remain open.

People will be allowed outside to exercise and socialise in public spaces outside with their household or one other person, but not indoors or in private gardens, and will be able to travel to work if they cannot work from home.

Furlough payments at 80% will be extended for the duration of the restrictions as high streets once again shut up shop.

MPs will vote on the new measures before they are introduced at 0001 on Thursday, and when they lapse on December 2, the current tier system will be reintroduced.

The hope is that Covid-19 cases will drop low enough to keep on top of outbreaks at a regional level.

Mr Johnson said: “I’m afraid no responsible Prime Minister can ignore the message of those figures.

“We know the cost of these restrictions – the impact on jobs and livelihoods, and people’s mental health. No-one wants to be imposing these measures.”

The Prime Minister thanked people who had been “putting up with” local restrictions.

But he warned: “We’ve got to be humble in the face of nature… the virus is spreading even faster than the reasonable worst case scenario of our scientific advisers.

“Unless we act, we could see deaths in this country running at several thousand a day – a peak of mortality, alas, bigger than the one we saw in April.”

He warned that “Christmas is going to different this year” but added that by taking action now he hoped that families could be together.

Professor Chris Whitty said the number of people in NHS beds in England will exceed the peak of the first wave without further measures.

The chief medical officer for England told the Downing Street press conference there is an increase in prevalence “in virtually every part of the country”, apart from possibly the North East where stricter measures are in place, and cases are not constrained to one age group.

Discussing NHS bed use in England, he said: “Currently only in the North West is this coming close to the peak that we previously had, but it is increasing in every area.

He told the press conference : “We now have several hospitals with more inpatients with Covid than we had during the peak in the spring.”

Prof Whitty added that “the death rate, although rising, is still significantly below the peak”.

But if numbers keep rising, “in terms of deaths over the winter, there’s the potential for this to be twice as bad, or more, compared to the first wave,” according to Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance.

Without further action, the NHS will breach its fixed and surged bed capacity -including beds in Nightingale hospitals – by the first week of December even if planned operations are cancelled, according to modelling by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which advises Government scientists.

More people could be admitted to hospital over the next six weeks than was seen over the first wave, Sir Patrick Vallance has said.

Projections suggest this would be seen “across the country as a whole” with “some hospitals earlier than others, some a bit later”, Sir Patrick warned.

The models suggest “increasing deaths over the next six weeks”, with a figure close to the first wave peak by December 8 “if nothing is done”.

“Clearly if you stop the R from increasing, if you allow R to come down then you would flatten this off and then potentially reverse it,” Sir Patrick said.

“But on the current trajectory that is what is thought to be the prediction for deaths over the next six weeks and of course that would continue to go up because the hospitalisations already exceeded the first wave peak by this time, deaths would follow.

“So unfortunately that’s a very grim picture in terms of what this looks like in the absence of action and continued growth.”