you of the announcements that were made. a four—week lockdown lockd own starts lockdown starts on thursday. bars and restaurants will close, but takeaways can continue to operate — as in the spring lockdown. non—essential retail and hospitality will be forced to close — supermarkets will stay open households will not be allowed to mix inside, unless for child care reasons schools and universities will be allowed to stay open. the government chief scientific adviser, sir patrick vallance, said that there is currently a very grim picture of what the next six weeks look like. this shows the hospital daily admissions. you can see the first peak on the left—hand side, and then

over to the right hand side you come up—to—date today and then the projections forward over the next six weeks. this is a consensus view gci’oss six weeks. this is a consensus view across a number of modelling groups. what you can see here is a projection that over the next six weeks into early december, the numbers exceed the numbers of hospitalisations in the first wave peak. as chris has already said, in some hospitals you see that already, but to suggest across the country, we would see this. some hospitals earlier than others. some a bit later, but this is the projection in terms of hospital admissions over the next six weeks. with the uncertainties in the shaded blue area. next slide please. inevitably, hospitalisations lead unfortunately to deaths in some people. again you can see the first wave on the left—hand side and the dotted line indicates the top of the first wave. on the right—hand side, you can the

projection from today going forward in the blue. again, the light blue indicates the uncertainty range. what you can see is the model suggests increasing, this is a consensus gci’oss suggests increasing, this is a consensus across models, increasing deaths across the next six weeks. by the beginning of december, the 8th of december, this is very close to the first wave peak. if nothing is done. if you stop the r from increasing, allow it to come down, then this would flatten off and potentially reverse. but on the current trajectory, that is what is thought to be the prediction for deaths over the next six weeks. of course that would continue to go up because they hospitalisations already exceeded the first wave peak by this time this would follow. u nfortu nately by this time this would follow. unfortunately that is a very grim picture in terms of what this looks like in the absence of action and continued growth. joining me now is chris hopson,

the chief executive of nhs providers. thank you for speaking to us on bbc news. from what you have heard, do you agree, first off, with those projections and the actions being taken? what we know talking to hospital chief executives is that the number of admissions is rising pretty rapidly. what those chief executives are really worried about is if the continue to rise and that rise coincides with winter, when the nhs is at its most busy, also at a point when we are trying to recover the care backlogs from the first phase, and we know that most hospitals have lost somewhere between 10—30% of their capacity because of the need to separate corvette a nd because of the need to separate corvette and non—covid patients. that feels a perfect storm. they have been arguing, as we have been arguing for the last few weeks, the government needs to take quick, decisive and clear action to ensure that the nhs has got the capacity it

needs to do all of those different jobs. look after people from a covid second surge, make sure we can treat people overwinter second surge, make sure we can treat people over winter when we know the nhs gets more stress, and then also at the same time make sure we catch up at the same time make sure we catch up with those backlogs. first point, you brought up the backlog, how bad is it? we know that in the first phase, because we simply did not know what was happening, the nhs did need to concentrate on ensuring we had sufficient capacity. the nhs did an amazing job had sufficient capacity. the nhs did an amazingjob in had sufficient capacity. the nhs did an amazing job in creating 33,000 extra beds. one of the issues that we did have to delay some nonessential, in other words, we did have to delay some nonessential, in otherwords, not absolute emergency care. that has obviously had an impact on a number of patients. we are very keen to do is make sure that we treat those patients as quickly as possible. that is what we are doing absolutely full pelt at the minute. we want to carry on doing that, but clearly if you get large numbers of covid patients, that prevents you from

doing it. classic example, iwas talking to a hospital chief executive last week who said they had to convert three of their words in the space of two days that would normally be words where you would have recovering elective surgery patients. they had to turn them into covid words. that is why it is so important for the nhs to control the numbers of covid patients we have got. is this four week... if it is approved on wednesday by parliament, is this four—week circuit break going to help? as far as the nhs seesit going to help? as far as the nhs sees it because there is a time lag of normally two weeks before we say start seeing the impact? one of the obvious questions as has this been clear enough, quick enough and decisive enough. i think the obvious a nswer to decisive enough. i think the obvious answer to the question is it is actually in all our hands, which effectively is that this will only work if people comply with the rules. i think what we are nervous about is, as you can see from some

of the local lockdowns for example, we are beginning to see compliance with lockdown rules fraying at the edges. if we want to ensure that the nhs absolutely can treat every single patient that we would like to, both covid and non—covid, it is in our hands. we have to follow the rules. hopefully it will work, but obviously that remains to be seen. white back as far as the rules go, like you say it is in our hands, you talk about capacity. the prime minister also made the point that this virus is doubling faster than he can provide any extra capacity. is there anything he could do to help the nhs? what we have done is we have put in place, is where he was referring to, those nightingale hospitals. they are ready to be deployed. somebody made this point very successfully earlier on in the afternoon on your channel, which as it is not just afternoon on your channel, which as it is notjust beds, it is also staff. we actually staff nightingale

hospitals by taking staff away from existing hospitals. so there is a natural limit to the number of people that we can magic out of thin air. one of the things that people will be aware of is that we have got 80,000 workforce vacancies in the nhs at the moment, and we know that oui’ nhs at the moment, and we know that our staff are really, really tired. chief executives are reporting, as you would expect, particularly in areas of high infection, higher levels of staff absence. yes, in a sense, you can use the nightingale is to provide extra beds, but in the end, the critical, in a sense, limiting factor is the availability of staff. how are we looking for in the provision of ppe? we are pretty confident that it will be different in this phase. a huge amount of work has been going on, particularly in the centre of government and n nhs england an improvement for leading

nhs ata england an improvement for leading nhs at a national level to make sure ppe is available. we have been assured by people who are buying and provide that stock centrally that the definitely will be sufficient stock to get us through the next period. as we know from the first phase, that is really important. we also had a projection using the data that we have now. this is the six—week projection that patrick valla nce six—week projection that patrick vallance was detailing. he made the point that we had the acute nhs beds and the ventilator beds as well, and he worked through the projections, and certainly for the acute beds, the critical date was the 20th of november. if you do not have enough beds, what happens then? how is that playing in your planning? that is one of the things that are slightly different from the first phase. the focus on the first phase was the

number of ventilators. one of the things we have learned as a result of that first phase, is that actually the best treatment for many people is not to put them on mechanical ventilation, but actually to give them oxygen therapy. connect them to an oxygen machine which you can do on the general ward. however, the problem is that you need those general wards for people who, for example, you have had to admit into hospital because they have fallen and slipped, or people who are wanting to do elective surgery, as pa rt wanting to do elective surgery, as part of catching up on the backlog. so the issue is that the pressure is greatest on those general and acute beds. that is why, actually, we should be spending slightly less time worrying about ventilated beds and more time worrying about those general and acute beds. that is precisely why we have all been seeing in the nhs, the bit that really makes us nervous is if you have that combination of a full—blown coat covid second surge right when the nhs gets very busy

overwinter, that is usually december december and january, and you're trying to recover those care backlogs, that is a perfect storm of demand. on the other side, you have got lost capacity because we are having to separate out covid and non—covid patients and a very tired staff, and numbers of staff off sick. that is why we have been seeing tough, decisive, quick, clear, effective lockdowns that everybody knows what they are meant to be doing, and crucially we all observe, that is the way to ensure the nhs can do itsjob overwinter. do you agree with the prime minister's statement that for the first time in our lives, if we do not do this, the nhs will not be there for us, is it that serious? our view is that if we did not put these lockdown arrangements into place, there is a real danger we would be dealing the nhs an impossible task. one of the things

we need to remember is those 1.2 million front line staff any nhs who did an absolutely amazing job over the first phase. but what they are 110w the first phase. but what they are now saying to us as they are incredibly tired and all they can say is five more months of hard slog. it feels really important to me that we should try and ensure we give them a reasonable workload. one of the ways we can do that is to ensure that the number of covid patients coming into hospital and ambulance, community health services, is lower than it should be by putting those lockdowns into place. that means they can then focus on those patients who they have to treat, because they are an emergency, respiratory illnesses, broken hips and knees because they have slipped over, all those things, and also we can carry on treating those people who had their care delayed in the first phase. chief

executive of nhs providers, thank you very much for your time. let's ta ke let's take a look at the situation in the devolved nations. in wales — the 17—day "firebrea k" lockdown — with people only able to leave their homes for limited reasons continues. it is currently set to finish on november the 9th. northern ireland first minister arlene foster, has said that the current tightened restrictions there will end, as planned, on the 13th of novermber. pubs and restaurants have been closed, and schools, which will re—open on monday, were closed for two weeks. scotland's first minister nicola sturgeon has urged against nonessential travel across the border with england. a new five—level system of restrictions for tackling coronavirus will come into force in scotland on monday, which will see travel restrictions imposed on many scots.

that is the picture across the uk. now it's time for a look at the weather with alina jenkins. storm aidan has been bringing torrential rain for a large swathes of the uk today. more in the forecast for tomorrow. further rain and gales and a number of yellow warnings from the met office. other details are on our website. many will be dry this evening as the rain eases from western scotland, but we re eases from western scotland, but were read starts to pile into northern ireland and western scotland, wales, western england, so transferring eastwards. some gusty, blustery winds, not a cold night. tempter is not more than 7—10. that rain was slowly clear eastwards leaving some spells of sunshine behind. but also some heavy showers and more persistent rain starts to move on as the afternoon moves on. particularly across northern england, wales and the midlands, where we could see some localised flooding. strong winds again

particularly across the western side of scotland, but not a cold day, temperatures between 10—17. goodbye.

this is bbc news, i'm lukwesa burak, the headlines at eight. the prime minister has announced a month long lockdown in england from thursday — as the uk records its one millionth case of covid since the outbreak took hold. christmas is going to be different this year, perhaps very different, but it's my sincere hope and belief that by taking tough action now we can allow families across the country to be together. non—essential shops, bars and restaurants will close but schools and universities will stay open. the prime minister will take the changes to parliament on monday. england's chief medical officer says there's been a "significant rate of increase" in covid cases across the entire country. the prevalence of this disease has been going up extremely rapidly