UK Covid: Boris Johnson says country will be dealing with fallout for rest of his life - as it happened

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6.45pm GMT

Much of what's happened in lockdown has the risk of making people who are on the borderlines of deprivation in more difficult economic and other circumstances and we all know that has a massive impact on long-term health implications.

We're all fighting the same pandemic across the whole of the European continent and indeed much of the world.

Vaccines are an international operation, they're produced by collaboration between great national scientists, it's a fantastic thing to see how they've been developed and will continue to work with European partners to deliver the vaccine rollout.

The height of the [second] peak would undoubtedly have been a lot lower if that new, much more transmissible and probably more fatal - but that is more questionable, but the transmissibility I don't think is questionable - had that not arrived, I think the pattern of the second wave in the UK would've been very different.

A lot of people do want to know about what's going to happen on the holiday front and I know there's a great deal of curiosity and interest.

All I can say is it's just too early to say and my advice is to everybody to wait for the global travel task force to report.

These are very hard decisions and there are no good outcomes either way. All these consequences are very tough for people and all I can say is we took all the decisions with the interest of the British people foremost in our hearts and in an effort to protect the public and prevent death and suffering. Though doubtless there will be a moment to properly review, to learn lessons for future pandemics of a kind which I'm sure there will be.

The general point is we had a bad outcome. Many other countries had a bad outcome.

Related: Coronavirus live news: Spain to lift curbs on UK arrivals; Norway tightens restrictions

5.56pm GMT

This is what Boris Johnson said to Sky's Beth Rigby when asked how long Britain would be dealing with the aftermath of the Covid crisis. (See 5.26pm.) He replied:

I certainly think this is something that we will all remember and be dealing with in different ways - certainly in my case - for as long as I live. It's an extraordinary moment in our history, a deeply difficult and distressing period.