Boris Johnson has pledged to “fortify” critical services against Covid with a ramped-up testing plan.
The prime minister announced on Tuesday afternoon that 100,000 critical workers would be given rapid tests for the virus every day.
He said organisations covered would include food processing, transport and border security workers.
It comes after the UK recorded a further 218,724 cases of Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours.
“We’ve identified 100,000 critical workers in areas from food processing to transport to our border force and from 10 January we’ll be rolling out lateral flow testing available on every working day,” the prime minister said in virtual a press conference.
“We’ll be sending testing kits directly to these organisations and liaising with them on logistics.”
Mr Johnson said he believed the UK could get through the wave of the omicron variant of Covid without a lockdown or closing businesses.
“As the NHS moves to a war footing I will be recommending to Cabinet tomorrow we continue with Plan B because the public have responded and changed their behaviour buying valuable time to get boosters in arms,” he said.
But he warned that the latest record Covid case figures showed that those who believed the pandemic to be over were “profoundly wrong”.
“Previous waves of the pandemic didn’t have a single day with more than 100,000 new cases reported, one day last week we had 200,000 people test positive,” he added.
“And the latest figure today is another 218,000, though that includes some delayed reports.
“So anyone who thinks our battle with Covid is over, I’m afraid is profoundly wrong. This is a moment for the utmost caution.”
