Matt Hancock refuses to say if pubs in Sheffield will be open this weekend

The Health Secretary told ITV’s This Morning: “It depends how much we can control it now.

“If this runs out of control now, then we’ll have to take heavier measures in the future. The more we can control it now by everybody doing that bit, including us – absolutely – but everybody together, then the easier it is going to be to have as normal a Christmas as possible.”

On the possibility of a vaccine, Mr Hancock said: “For the mass rollout we’re talking about the first bit of next year, if all goes well.

“Hopefully in the first few months – there’s still a chance of it coming on stream before Christmas, but we’ve then got to roll it out and the first people who will get it are the people who are most vulnerable – people in care homes, older people.

“There’s a series of different vaccines, but we are talking about – essentially, for it to have an impact on how we live our lives – we’re talking about the start of next year.”

The Health Secretary said restrictions would focus on socialising and wanted to avoid school closures: “The evidence is … schools aren’t where a lot of the transmission happens, it’s more about people socialising.”

He pointed out that there were already parts of the country where “there are measures in place to say that you shouldn’t socialise with people outside your household”.

He was unable to say whether England’s pubs would be allowed to open this weekend as the Government prepared extra measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.

“We will be absolutely clear about the changes we need to make in the very, very near future,” Mr Hancock said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to address the nation on Tuesday amid mounting concern about the rise in the number of Covid-19 cases.

Mr Hancock said his answer on pubs was “not a no, and it’s not a yes”, adding: “We have been working on this all weekend, we haven’t taken the final decisions about what we need to do in response to the surge that we have seen in the last few weeks.”