Dr Susan Hopkins announces on the coronavirus briefing today that it is “up to the government“ to decide how the Christmas will look like this year.

Dr Hopkins is a head of Public Health England and a healthcare epidemiologist consultant at Imperial College London.

She says that there is a high possibility for Christmas to be “as close to normal as possible” but also warns that “for every day that we release, we will need two days of tightening.”

Public Health England’s Dr Susan Hopkins, also reveals that the majority of people are wearing face masks and following the coronavirus restrictions.

On the coronavirus data briefing today the Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser Angela McLean announces that SAGE has planned households mixing over Christmas.

Is Christmas still on? @emilymorganitv asks Dr Susan Hopkins from Public Health England and Professor Dame Angela McLean, chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence, how many households can we hope to mix with this year? pic.twitter.com/QnQHWmjT84

— ITV News (@itvnews) November 18, 2020

At the No10 briefing, she adds: “What is really important is that we go into a festive week, when we want to mix with our friends and family, the number of infections in the community is as low as possible.”

The Head of NHS in England, Professor Stephen Powis, shares that the NHS are “working incredibly hard to ensure that we are ready to deploy vaccines” and to receive an approval from the regulators so they can proceed with the vaccines procedures.

He highlights that they will try to use many traditional vaccine procedures but will also implement new ways of delivering vaccines such as creating “vaccine centres.”

Words by: Vanya Petyova | Subbing: Grace Staley