British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a series of emergency meetings with scientists and his top cabinet members later on Monday to discuss the possibility of imposing
tougher COVID-19 restrictions on England amid soaring coronavirus cases in the country, including those related to the new Omicron variant,
The Mirror has reported.
The claims come as UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned that the government could not rule out any new restrictive measures before Christmas after the cabinet's scientific advisers argued COVID hospitalisations could rise to between 3,000 and 10,000 a day unless "more stringent measures" are taken.
"We've seen with Omicron there's a lot that we still don't know about Omicron. That's the truth of the matter. The reality is there's a lot of uncertainty", the health secretary stressed, pledging that the government would do "what is necessary" to keep the public safe.
Javid's comments follow Johnson facing the largest Tory revolt of his time in office on 14 December, when a total of 99 Conservatives voted against the PM's so-called "Plan B" on tougher COVID-19 rules for England this winter.
The plan, which includes the introduction of health certificates for nightclubs and large events in the country, was passed by a majority of 243 thanks to support from the Labour Party, but left angry Tory backbenchers issuing a host of warnings.
One of the Tory rebels, senior MP Tobias Ellwood, was quoted as saying that the government should improve its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), Stephen Reicher, for his part, insisted that it was clear that Plan B measures alone would not stop the increasing number of cases. He warned that waiting until after Christmas to impose stricter rules is "probably too late".
Last week, UK media outlets reported that Downing Street was considering proposals for a post-Christmas two-week "circuit breaker" lockdown to tackle the spread of the Omicron strain.
Reicher's fellow SAGE member David Spiegelhalter, in turn, asserted that "we [the government] can't wait for hospitalisations to go through the roof before we do something about it, because by then it's too late".
In a separate development last week,
Brexit Minister Lord David Frost resigned from the UK government over what he described as "concerns about the current direction of travel".
In a letter to Johnson, Frost noted that he is alarmed over Downing Street's handling of the COVID pandemic, insisting that the UK needs to "learn to live with COVID".
The letter came as Britain reported 12,133 more cases of the Omicron variant on Sunday, in a 21 percent increase from the day before. The total number of Omicron cases currently stand at 37,101, with 10,059 cases of the variant recorded on Saturday, according to government statistics.