Omicron lockdown: Health secretary Sajid Javid refuses to rule out new coronavirus restrictions being brought in before Christmas

Sajid Javid described advice from Government scientific advisers warning of the possible impact on hospital admissions from Omicron as ‘sobering’ and said there are ‘no guarantees’ when asked about the possibility of further restrictions.

He told The Andrew Marr Show: ‘It’s a very sobering analysis. We take it very seriously.’

He added: ‘We do have to challenge data and underlying assumptions, I think that is appropriate, and take into account a broader set of facts.’

When it was suggested to him he was not ruling out a circuit-breaker or new restrictions before Christmas, Mr Javid said: ‘There are no guarantees in this pandemic, I don’t think.

‘At this point we just have to keep everything under review.’

The Health Secretary said it remained an ‘individual decision’ whether people went to Christmas parties.

He said many of the parties he had been invited to had been cancelled or scaled back.

And he told The Andrew Marr Show: ‘I think that’s true up and down the country.’

But he said the situation was not ‘a lockdown at all by any means’.

He added: ‘What it is, is people taking their own individual decisions.’