UK coronavirus: more than 1m in England infected as UK daily positive tests hit record 60,916 - as it happened

• Boris Johnson has revealed that more than 2% of the population of England - or more than one million people in total - is now infected with coronavirus. That’s equivalent to one person in 50. The figure comes from the Office for National Statistic’s infection survey, which is viewed as one of the most reliable guides to the prevalence of coronavirus in the community because its figures are based on the results of a large-scale, weighted survey, and don’t just track the results from people who have actively decided to get a test. The last published ONS survey, released on Christmas Eve, put the coronavirus rate in England at one person in 85. Commenting on the new figures Johnson told a press conference at No 10:

When the Office of National Statistics (ONS) is telling us that more than 2% of the population is now infected - that’s over one million people in England, and when today we have reported another 60,000 new cases, and when the number of patients in hospitals in England is now 40% higher than at the first peak in April, I think obviously everybody - you all - want to be sure that we in Government are now using every second of this lockdown to put that invisible shield around the elderly and the vulnerable in the form of vaccination and so to begin to bring this crisis to an end.

Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, said an infection rate of one in 50 was “really quite a large number indeed”. See 5.08pm.

• Johnson claimed that it might be possible to start relaxing the lockdown measures from February - provided certain conditions were met. Asked if the country could be out of lockdown by March, he gave a highly qualified answer. He said:

Our ability to get through this fast depends on a number of things. Provided we don’t learn anything new about the virus we don’t yet to understand, some new mutation we haven’t currently bargained for; provided the vaccine rollout goes according to plan; provided the vaccine rule is as efficacious as we think it is; above all, provided that everybody follows the guidance now, then we think that by the middle of February, when a very considerable portion of the most vulnerable groups will have be vaccinated, then there really is a prospect of beginning the relaxation of some of these measures. I would not put it any stronger than that.

• But Whitty said some restrictions might still be needed next winter. He said said the risk level would gradually decrease over time with measures being “lifted by degrees possibly at different rates in different parts of the country, we’ll have to see”. He went on:

We’ll then get over time to a point where people say this level of risk is something society is prepared to tolerate and lift right down to almost no restrictions at all.

We might have to bring in a few in next winter for example, that’s possible, because winter will benefit the virus.

• Johnson said that almost a quarter of the over-80s in England have now had one dose of vaccine. Announcing the latest figures he said:

We have now vaccinated over 1.1m people in England and over 1.3m across the UK. And that includes more than 650,000 people over 80, which is 23 per cent of all the over 80s in England.

And that means that nearly one in four of one of the most vulnerable groups will have in two to three weeks – all of them - a significant degree of immunity.

• But Johnson could not guarantee that all children would be back in school before the summer holidays.

• Whitty said there was a risk that delaying the period between giving the first dose of vaccine and the second could help the virus to mutate, but he said the danger was small. He said the advantages of giving more people a first dose quickly justified this.

• Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, played down the risks posed by the South African variant of the virus. He said a possible change in the virus shape in the variant “theoretically gives it a bit more risk of not being recognised” by the immune system. But he went on:

There is nothing yet to suggest that’s the case. This is being looked at very actively.

It’s worth remembering that when a vaccine is given you don’t just make one antibody against one bit, you make lots of antibodies against lots of different bits, and so it’s unlikely that all of that will be escaped by any mutations. But we don’t know yet.

At the moment, you’d say the most likely thing is that this wouldn’t abolish vaccine effect. It may have some overall effect on efficacy but we don’t know.

• Whitty said the government’s timetable for administering the vaccine was “realistic but not easy”.

That’s all from me for today. But our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here.