A SECOND LOCKDOWN has been announced in England with all non-essential activity to cease from Thursday.

Pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops will be required to shut until 2 December under tough new measures revealed by the government today. 

There will also be a nationwide ban on household visits. Exercise is allowed on a one-to-one basis with one person from one other household. 

As in Ireland, schools and third-level institutes will remain open. Construction work, manufacturing and the courts service will also continue. 

People will be asked to stay at home except for essential work, education and food shopping.

Hairdressers, leisure centres and entertainment venues will also close next week. 

The new restrictions were announced by Prime Minster Boris Johnson at Downing Street this evening in an effort to curb the second wave of Covid-19 in the country. 

“Now is the time to take action because there is no alternative,” Johnson said. “We have got to be humbled in the face of nature.”

Johnson also said that there was to be no mixing of households, although support bubbles for single-adult households are permitted. 

Apologising to businesses, Johnson also said that the government will extend furlough payments at 80% for the duration of the new national lockdown measures in England.

Under the new restrictions, elite sport will continue – but there will be a ban on amateur sport. 

The press conference came after new data showed the extent of cases across England. The Office for National Statistics estimated that 568,100 people in households were infected with coronavirus in the week ending 23 October.

And, today, the UK also surpassed one million lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19. 

Figures released today showed another 21,915 lab-confirmed cases were reported as of 9am, meaning the total now stands at 1,011,660. However, the exact number of infections in the UK is thought to be far higher due to a lack of widespread testing during the start of the pandemic. 

The UK has also recorded 46,555 deaths related to Covid-19. 

“No responsible prime minister can ignore the message of those figures,” Johnson said this evening. 

The Prime Minister and his team had been insisting right up until yesterday that their system of three tiers was the best approach to tackling the second wave while avoiding the economic damage of a full circuit-break. He said a second lockdown would be “disastrous” for the economy.  

However, members of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) backed the introduction of more stringent measures.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar said the consequences of sticking with the current “insufficient” restrictions would be “much worse” than going for a second lockdown.

The director of the Wellcome Trust said: “The sooner we act, the sooner we can start to recover. It will be a very difficult few weeks now and no one can underestimate the toll that will take on people.

Sage member Professor Calum Semple told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “For the naysayers that don’t believe in a second wave, there is a second wave.

“And, unlike the first wave, where we had a national lockdown which protected huge swathes of society, this outbreak is now running riot across all age groups.”

Professor John Edmunds said the only way to have a “relatively safe” Christmas is to take “stringent” action now to bring the incidence of the virus “right down”.

It comes after a senior Government scientific adviser said it is “definitely too late to think that the two-week circuit-breaker on its own will sort this out”.

“It would bring it down a bit but it wouldn’t be enough to bring (the R value) right down. A two-week circuit-breaker would have an effect but now almost certainly it would need to go on for longer to have a significant effect.”

Northern Ireland

This evening, Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster confirmed that there will be no changes to restrictions in the North, with schools set to re-open on Monday. 

Foster also said that restrictions will end, as planned, on 13 November. 

“We must adapt to coexist with the virus. That means increasing hospital & testing capacity,” Foster tweeted. 

Earlier, 649 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Northern Ireland. 

With reporting by PA