Hospitality venues to close at 10 pm from Thursday, new measures outline

Pubs, bars and restaurants in England will close at 10 pm from Thursday, to tackle the spread of COVID-19.

Other hospitality venues will be restricted to table service only as the industry is struggling with over 900,000 jobs hanging in the balance.

The full details of these measures will be outlined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson later today at 8 pm.

This comes as the alert level for coronavirus in the UK has risen to level 4, meaning that transmission of the virus is "high or rising exponentially".

In an interview with BBC Breakfast, Micheal Gove, said that there was a

"beneficial effect" on stopping the spread of COVID-19 by closing venues at 10 pm.

Although people may argue that the virus is not going to disappear after 10 pm and is not going to choose groups of more than six specifically, this move from ministers hopes to act as a warning to members of the public that efforts from them should be doubled down on.

Mr Gove also said: "We're not going back to the sorts of measures that we had in the spring,"

The Cabinet Office minister added that if people could work from home that they should but that it is "very important that those people whose jobs require them to be in a specific workplace do so".

Without further measures, Sir Patrick Vallance said that there could be 50,000 new COVID-19 cases every day by the middle of October.

As we edge closer to the winter season, we head towards inevitability for spreading such respiratory viruses. But how quick and how much of an impact the spread would have, is still not yet determined.