BORIS Johnson has ordered a new national lockdown to control the spread of coronavirus amid fears the NHS risks being overwhelmed.

The Prime Minister made a televised address at 8pm after coming under intense pressure to take urgent action.

He said the people should only leave home for essential shopping, exercise, medical assistance or to escape domestic abuse. People should work from home unless they are unable to do so.

Primary schools, secondary schools and colleges are to close immediately, except to children of key workers. Early years settings, including nurseries, will remain open.

Some exams will not go ahead this summer.

Shielding for vulnerable people is to begin again and those who need to shield will be contacted.

Mr Johnson, revealing that the Government is again instructing people to stay at home, said: “You may only leave home for limited reasons permitted in law, such as to shop for essentials, to work if you absolutely cannot work from home, to exercise, to seek medical assistance such as getting a Covid test, or to escape domestic abuse.”

He suggested England could “steadily” move out of lockdown from mid-February.

Urging caution about the timetable, he said: “If our understanding of the virus doesn’t change dramatically, once again, if the rollout of the vaccine programme continues to be successful, if deaths start to fall as the vaccine takes effect and – critically – if everyone plays their part by following the rules, then I hope we can steadily move out of lockdown, reopening schools after the February half-term and starting cautiously to move regions down the tiers.”

The Prime Minister said that in England the number of Covid patients in hospitals has increased by nearly a third in the last week to almost 27,000 – some 40 per cent higher than the first peak in April.

On December 29 “more than 80,000 people tested positive for Covid across the UK”, the number of deaths is up by 20 per cent over the last week “and will sadly rise further”.

He said it was "clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out".

He added: “In England we must therefore go into a national lockdown which is tough enough to contain this variant.”