Health secretary Matt Hancock will lead a Downing Street press conference on Monday about the latest developments on coronavirus. 

It comes with Boris Johnson under pressure from parents and Tory backbenchers over reports schools may stay shut until Easter. 

Hancock is expected to hold the briefing at 5pm on Monday, after saying at the weekend any relaxation of restrictions was a “long, long way” away.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson told a Westminster briefing on Monday that restrictions would be reviewed on February 15, but that any actual relaxation could be much later.

He added that in advance of February 15 the government would look at the latest scientific evidence and data.

He added: “It has always been our intention to ease restrictions where we can from that point on the 15th, and schools are obviously our top priority.”

Johnson told broadcasters on Monday that the government was “definitely looking at” the possibility of travellers arriving in the UK being required to quarantine in hotels.

It comes amid fears new, and potentially more transmissible, strains of the virus could be imported.  

He said: “We have to realise there is at least the theoretical risk of a new variant that is a vaccine-busting variant coming in. We’ve got to be able to keep that under control.”

Johnson went on to praise the UK’s vaccination programme.

He said: “With this vaccination programme, we’ve done I think 6.3m, 6.4m people now in the UK as a whole.

“We are on target just, just, we’re on target to hit our ambition of vaccinating everybody in those vulnerable groups by the middle of February.

“We want to make sure that we protect our population, protect this country against reinfection from abroad.

“That idea of looking at hotels is certainly one thing we’re actively now working on.

“We need a solution that gives us the maximum possible protection against reinfection from abroad.”