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England will enter a month-long lockdown starting Thursday, Boris Johnson announced.
Until December 2, people in England will only be able to leave their homes for specific reasons, such as education, work or grocery shopping.
Johnson, speaking at a news conference in Downing Street late Saturday, said there was “no alternative” to a second period of national lockdown restrictions.
He said that “no responsible prime minister” could ignore the growing number of coronavirus infections in England.
Johnson warned of a greater number of COVID-19 deaths this winter than during the first wave of the pandemic, in the spring, without tougher measures.
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Schools, colleges and universities will remain open, while those unable to work from home, such as construction or manufacturing workers, will be encouraged to continue to go to their workplaces.
Pubs, bars and restaurants will close throughout the country, although they may offer take-out and home delivery services.
Non-essential shops, hair salons, and entertainment venues will also be closed.
The prime minister said the leave scheme, which has made the government pay a proportion of people’s wages during the COVID-19 crisis but was supposed to end on Saturday, will now run until November.
Different households will be prohibited from mixing, although support bubbles and babysitting bubbles will remain and children will still be able to move between households if their parents are separated.
The gyms will be closed, but people can continue to exercise for unlimited periods outdoors, either with people from their own homes or individually with a person from another home.
People will be able to travel internationally for work, but will not be allowed to travel abroad for vacations.
Premier League football and other elite sports will be allowed to continue, due to current testing regimes for professional athletes, but amateur sports will be suspended.
Parliamentarians are expected to vote on the new measures on Wednesday.
The prime minister said there was a need to be “humble in the face of nature” with the virus “spreading even faster than the worst case reasonable from our scientific advisers.”
“Unless we act, we could see deaths in this country of several thousand a day, a mortality spike, sadly, much higher than what we saw in April,” he added.
Government scientists have warned that hospitals could run out of beds as early as December without further measures.
And Johnson cautioned that “the risk is that, for the first time in our lives, the NHS will not be there for us and for our families.”
The prime minister added: “We will get out of this, but we must act now to contain this fall surge.
“We are not going back to the full-scale lockdown of March and April.
“It is less prohibitive and less restrictive, but as of Thursday the basic message is the same: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.”
Until now, the government has been applying a localized approach to COVID-19 restrictions, with England divided into three tiers of measures, based on local infection rates.
The government’s goal is that, after a period of one month of stricter national measures, the different parts of the country are returned to the three existing levels, depending on the regional transmission rates.
Earlier on Saturday, Johnson’s top ministers were briefed by government scientists ahead of a remote cabinet meeting.
The prime minister also held talks with senior Conservative MPs.
