Boris Johnson has announced a month-long national lockdown for England.

People in England have been told to stay at home from Thursday – as the national lockdown gets underway with the closure of hospitality and non-essential shops.

Pubs, bars and restaurants will close, though takeaways will be allowed, and all non-essential retail will be shut.

The lockdown, which will be brought into force on Thursday, will last until December 2.

The Prime Minister said the NHS will be overwhelmed within weeks without a national lockdown in England.

He said that without action, deaths would reach “several thousand a day”, with a “peak of mortality” worse than the country saw during the lockdown in April.

While the extra restrictions are put in place, furlough payments at 80% will be extended as high streets once again shut up shop.

MPs will vote on the new measures before they are introduced at 0001 on Thursday, and when they lapse on December 2, the current tier system will be reintroduced.

The hope is that Covid-19 cases will drop low enough to keep on top of outbreaks at a regional level.

In a Downing Street press conference, Mr Johnson said “no responsible Prime Minister can ignore” the rising rates of Covid-19 infections as he announced the lockdown.

He said “we need to be humble in the face of nature”, adding that the virus was spreading even faster than the worst case scenario envisaged by scientists.

Pressure has been mounting on Mr Johnson for several weeks, although he is understood to have been persuaded by new data on NHS capacity and figures released on Friday from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggesting 580,000 people a week are now contracting the virus.

Rates of coronavirus have been increasing in all parts of England and among all age groups and Government scientific advisers have said only a national lockdown could get on top of the epidemic.

Mr Johnson was joined by England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

Prof Whitty said inpatient beds was going up “on an exponential curve” and several hospitals already have more people in beds than at the peak earlier in the year.

Sir Patrick said what was clear from modelling in terms of deaths over the winter “there is potential for this to be twice as bad or more compared to the first wave.”

In terms of hospital admissions across England, over the next six weeks into early December, they would exceed the number of hospitalisations seen during the peak of the first wave, he said.

He added that it was a “very grim picture” of what would happen without further action.