BORIS Johnson will give a rare joint coronavirus press conference tomorrow with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance for the first time in weeks as new infections have continued to soar.
Flanked by his chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser, the PM will update the country as fears have grown over even stricter national measures and it will be illegal to meet with other households in the North East.
It comes areas of England, including Newcastle, were given even tighter coronavirus restrictions which will come into force tomorrow.
Mr Johnson gave a televised address last week as he announced 10pm curfew on pubs and other hospitality venues, alongside orders for office workers to work from home once again.
It is not expected that he will announced further national restrictions but he will address the skyrocketing infection numbers amid fears of a second national lockdown.
Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick also had a briefing last week, giving Brits a grim warning about the sheer scale of the outbreak.
They warned that the UK could see 50,000 coronavirus cases a day in just three weeks and deaths could soar by thousands if the bug continues to spread at its current rate.
And the coronavirus alert level was once again raised to level 4.
New infections in the UK rose by 4,044 yesterday as 13 more deaths were recorded.
But that number jumped past 6,000 for most of last week, as the PM and his top experts rung the alarm bell over a second wave of coronavirus.
Britain hit an all-time high of 6,874 recorded in a single day last week.
More than 17 million Brits are currently subject to local lockdown restrictions, including bans on meeting up with other households.
And there are warnings that London could be given fresh lockdown rules banning meeting with other households.
But as more places were given different disjointed rules, even the PM was unable to clearly explain what they were, as he fumbled over whether people could meet outdoors in the North East.
Minister have considered ordering all pubs and restaurants to shut for a fortnight and different households banned from socialising indoors under an emergency lockdown plan.
The social lockdown was an option presented to the Cabinet’s strategy committee before last week’s fresh restrictions.
In his speech last week, the PM said restrictions could last six months as the virus tightens its grip on Britain.
He said gave warnings that “significantly greater restrictions” could be slapped on the country “if all our actions fail to bring the R below 1” in the coming weeks.
