BORIS Johnson has scrapped the UK’s travel corridors, meaning arrivals from every country must self-isolate for at least five days.

He said: “Following conversations with the devolved administrations we will act together so this applies across the whole of the UK.”

The Prime Minister told the Downing Street press conference that the measure is in response to the rollout of coronavirus vaccines and the discovery of new strains of the virus.

He said: “It’s precisely because we have the hope of that vaccine and the risk of new strains coming from overseas that we must take additional steps now to stop those strains from entering the country.

“Yesterday we announced that we’re banning flights from South America and Portugal and to protect us against the risk from as-yet-unidentified strains we will also temporarily close all travel corridors from 0400 on Monday.”

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People arriving in the UK from a destination with a travel corridor are currently exempt from the 10-day quarantine requirement.

The new policy means arrivals from every destination will need to self-isolate for 10 days, or receive a negative result from a coronavirus test taken at least five days after they enter the UK.

It had already been announced that travellers arriving in England and Scotland from Monday will need to have a negative test taken up to 72 hours before leaving the country of departure.

Johnson also warned that the NHS is facing “extraordinary pressures”, having had the highest hospital admissions on a single day this week, and urged “this is not the time for the slightest relaxation of our national resolve”.

He said the country is involved in one of the fastest vaccination programmes in its history, but added: “It will be fatal if this sense of progress were now to breed any kind of complacency because the pressures on the NHS are extraordinary.

“On Tuesday we saw 4134 new admissions to hospital on a single day – the highest at any point in this pandemic.

“There are now more than 37,000 Covid patients in hospitals across the UK and in spite of all the efforts of our doctors and nurses and our medical staff we’re now seeing cancer treatments sadly postponed, ambulances queuing, and intensive care units spilling over into adjacent wards.

“This is not the time for the slightest relaxation of our national resolve and our individual efforts. So please stay at home, please protect the NHS and save lives.”

He urged the public to remember that the disease can be spread not only by standing too close to someone in a supermarket queue but also by handling something touched by an infected individual.

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Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty praised the “enormous efforts by so many people” as the growth in the number of confirmed cases has slowed.

He told the press conference: “We were not sure this was going to be possible with this new variant, but this demonstrates with the actions everyone has taken we are now slowing this right down and we are hoping that in due course it will start to drop.”

But he warned that hospitalisations are still rising and this is set to continue.

Whitty explained: "I’m afraid in the next week we do anticipate the number of people in the NHS and the number of deaths will continue to rise as the effects of what everyone has done take a while to feed through.”

Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance stressed that it is a “suppressed peak” that would “boil over for sure” if controls are eased.

He said: “This is not the natural peak that’s going to come down on its own, it’s coming down because of the measures that are in place.

“Take the lid off now and it’s going to boil over for sure and we’re going to end up with a big problem.

“And that’s a lesson about making sure it’s all cooled down enough before you get to that position.

“So I don’t think we should view the point as a natural turning point in the disease, it is a suppressed peak that we need to keep on top of.”

Whitty said the peak of people entering hospital will be in the next week to 10 days for most places.

England’s chief medical officer said “we hope” that the peak of infections “already has happened” in the south-east, east and London, where there was a surge in the Kent variant, but will be later elsewhere.

The number of people in the UK to have been given a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine is 3,234,946 as of January 14, according to Government data published on Friday – marking a rise of 316,694 from Thursday’s figures.

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Some 114,567 first doses have been given in Northern Ireland, on top of the 2,769,164 in England, 126,375 in Wales and 224,840 in Scotland.

So far, 443,234 second doses have been administered in the UK, including 420,510 in England, 129 in Wales, 19,264 in Northern Ireland and 3,331 in Scotland.

Vallance warned that some of the new variants may be able to “get round” the vaccines.

However, he told a No 10 news conference that it was “really quite easy” to adjust the vaccines to deal with mutations in the virus.

“It is possible that the variants will get round vaccines to some extent in the future and some of them that are out there in the world now may well have more of an effect to bypass some of the existing immune system that has come up in response to a vaccine or previous infection.

“I think it is likely that the vaccine we have now is going to protect against the UK variant and is going to provide protection I suspect against the other variants as well. The question is to what degree.”