Contingency plans for further Covid-19 lockdowns have been drawn up to stop the NHS being overwhelmed in the winter months, it has emerged.

Downing Street and its top advisers have said it is confident the vaccine rollout will prevent hospitalisations reaching levels of previous waves

But sources in Whitehall say concerns remain over a rise in infections later in the year, a surge in flu cases and a potential NHS staffing crisis.

The number of people in hospital with the virus has fallen, and the average rate of infection has decreased.

But infections are expected to rise again in September, when school and university terms begin and more workers are expected to return to the office.

Hopefully they won’t be needed, but the Government is said to be prepared for ‘local, regional or national’ lockdowns if they are needed to protect the health service.

The senior Downing Street source told i: ‘The Government believes it has got to grips with the pandemic following the vaccine rollout

‘Barring a new vaccine-beating strain, fears over a rise in infections similar to that seen last autumn are actually outweighed by other issues like an NHS staffing crisis and the likely resurgence in flu infections, and other respiratory diseases.

‘On top of Covid infections, these factors could tip the NHS back to the brink and force more lockdowns.’

It is understood that these emergency measures would be like the four-week ‘firebreak’ lockdown of November 2020.

It is likely restrictions would be short and during ‘school holidays and over Christmas’, the source adds.

Immunologist Professor Neil Ferguson, among the Government’s most prominent scientific advisers on Covid, has predicted it is unlikely a lockdown will be needed again to control the virus.

In an interview with the Times, he said: ‘I think it is unlikely we will need a new lockdown or even social distancing measures of the type we’ve had so far.’

The Imperial College professor also told the newspaper that lockdowns could not be ruled out, as the ‘caveat’ which might change the situation is if the ‘virus changes substantially’.

But Prof Ferguson added Covid was ‘going to transition quite quickly in a few months to be more something we live with and manage through vaccination rather than crisis measures’.

He said the vaccine had ‘dramatically changed the relationship between cases and hospitalisation’.

Prof Ferguson also said the Euro 2020 football championship had created an ‘artificially inflated level of contact’, leading to his predictions in July that the UK would hit 100,000 Covid cases a day following phase four of unlocking.

After the tournament ended cases decreased, and Prof Ferguson said the pingdemic also had a ‘reasonable effect’ on making it harder for the virus to spread.

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