Britain WILL avoid winter lockdown despite rising Covid cases as enough people have already had it, expert claims

BRITS will be able to celebrate Christmas without fear of another UK lockdown despite rising Covid cases.

Experts are claiming that the UK will be able to “avoid” social distancing restriction this winter because enough people have already had the killer virus.

Professor Neil Ferguson believes that it will be “unlikely” that the UK will be forced into a lockdown like last year in the festive period.

The epidemiologist, whose modelling helped to instigate the first lockdown last year, also thinks the booster jabs will help the cause.

The Sun's Give Britain A Booster campaign is also urging people to get a third jab.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said: "I think it is unlikely we will get anything close to what we had last year, that catastrophic winter wave.

"We might see slow increases as we did in October, for instance, but not anything as rapid as we saw last year.

"We can't be complacent, but at the moment I don't think we'll be in a situation the Netherlands is coming into where they really do need to get on top of rising case numbers using social distancing.

"I very much hope we can avoid that in this country."

Prof Ferguson added that modelling from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has indicated that if younger age groups are vaccinated it could help to “drive down transmission to low levels.”

However it will require the most vulnerable in society to have received their jabs first.

Prof Ferguson said that the UK could be seeing an "uptick" in Covid-19 cases but it is in "quite a different situation" from other European nations, where curbs on freedoms are being considered.

Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme what direction he believes the country is heading in terms of coronavirus, he said: "That's a very difficult question to answer right now.

"We've had two or three weeks of declining cases and admission to hospitals - that may be petering out, it is too early to say. There is a hint of an uptick in the last few days.

We are in quite a different situation from those European countries

Professor Ferguson

"But we are in quite a different situation from those European countries you are talking about (the Netherlands, Germany).

"We've had very high case numbers - between 30,000 and 50,000 a day - really for the last four months, since the beginning of July.

"That has obviously had some downsides. It has also paradoxically had an upside of boosting the immunity of the population compared with countries like Germany, the Netherlands and France, which have had much lower case numbers and are only now seeing an uptick."

His comments come after the Prime Minister warned that Covid “storm clouds are gathering” after concerning infection rates in Europe.

Some European countries, including the Netherlands, have already imposed a lockdown due to rising case numbers.

Cases in the UK have been falling and the latest figures show them 12 per cent down on last week.

Currently 10 EU countries including Poland, Greece and the Netherlands are deemed of "very high concern".

A further 13 are of "high concern" including Germany and Austria, which have retreated back into lockdown.