Boris Johnson to give joint press conference with Chris Whitty & Patrick Vallance tomorrow as coronavirus cases soar

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BORIS Johnson will give a rare joint coronavirus press conference tomorrow with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance for the first time in weeks, as new infections have continued to soar.

The Prime Minister will deliver another update on the second wave now gripping Britain as fears grow over even stricter national measures to come.

Boris Johnson will address the nation tomorrow afternoon

The PM will be flanked by the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser

It comes as areas of England, including Newcastle, were given even tighter coronavirus restrictions, making it illegal to meet with people not in your household.

New laws preventing people from mixing between families will come into place in the North East tomorrow.

Mr Johnson gave a televised address last week as he announced a 10pm curfew on pubs and other hospitality venues, alongside orders for office workers to work from home once again.

It is not expected that Boris will announce further national restrictions tomorrow, but he will address the skyrocketing infection numbers amid fears of a second national lockdown.

Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick also gave a briefing last week, giving Brits a grim warning about the sheer scale of the outbreak.

They warned that the UK could see 50,000 coronavirus cases a day in just three weeks and deaths could soar by thousands if the bug continues to spread at its current rate.

And the coronavirus alert level was once again raised to level 4.

New infections in the UK rose by 4,044 yesterday as 13 more deaths were recorded.

But that number jumped past 6,000 for most of last week, as the PM and his top experts rung the alarm bell over rising cases.

Britain hit an all-time high of 6,874 recorded in a single day too.

More than 17 million Brits are currently subject to local lockdown restrictions, including bans on meeting up with other households.

And there are warnings that London could be given fresh lockdown rules banning meeting with other households.

But as more places were given different disjointed rules, even the PM was unable to clearly explain what they were today as he fumbled over whether people could meet outdoors in the North East.

The PM was forced to clarify the rules with a tweet just hours after a chaotic press conference.

Minister have considered ordering all pubs and restaurants to shut for a fortnight and different households banned from socialising indoors under an emergency lockdown plan.

The social lockdown was an option presented to the Cabinet’s strategy committee before last week’s fresh restrictions.

In his speech last week, the PM said restrictions could last six months as the virus tightens its grip on Britain.

He said gave warnings that “significantly greater restrictions” could be slapped on the country “if all our actions fail to bring the R below 1” in the coming weeks.