Friday 1 July 2022 10:00 AM Are Covid restrictions STILL on the cards? Boris says no plans for curbs 'at ... trends now

Boris Johnson has refused to definitively rule out more Covid restrictions — as virus hospital admissions continue to rise.

The Prime Minister said there were no plans for curbs 'at the moment' as he appeared to leave the door open to future measures.

He was given the opportunity to rule out ever imposing restrictions again in an interview with LBC this morning at a NATO summit in Madrid.

'I think that we see no reason for that at the moment and the most important thing is vaccination,' he said.

But Mr Johnson suggested that a sharp spike in hospitalisations could be the trigger point for new restrictions. 

He added: 'We're not seeing the types of pressures on the medical services that would lead us to anything like that.'

Daily Covid hospital admissions have almost trebled in the last month to around 1,200 — though only a fraction of patients are primarily ill with the disease.

Cases have also risen sharply in recent weeks with an estimated one in 40 people carrying the virus in England last week, or 1.3million.

Mr Johnson refused to rule out a future lockdown in April, saying it would be 'irresponsible’ to discard something ‘that could save lives’ if a deadlier variant emerges.

Covid case numbers have became less important now that vaccines and natural immunity have severed the link between infection and severe illness.

Ministers are now looking to NHS virus figures to gauge the severity of the outbreak, which have been rising for over a month.