Normal life will not resume for at least six months, a key Government doctor has said, as the Government placed all parts of the UK on an “emergency footing” to tackle the coronavirus outbreak.

Dr Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer for England, said the nation will not be in “complete lockdown” for half a year but said social distancing measures will be lifted gradually.

Dr Harries said the three-week reviews on the measures to slow the disease’s spread will likely continue for six months and that their success would be judged on slowing its rate.

“But we must not then suddenly revert to our normal way of living, that would be quite dangerous,” she said.

A sudden lifting could see the nation’s sacrifices “wasted” with another spike in deaths, which have reached 1,228.

“We need to keep that lid on and then gradually we will be able to hopefully adjust some of the social distancing measures and gradually get us all back to normal,” she said.

Three weeks for review, two or three months to see if we’ve really squashed it, but three to six months, ideally, but lots of uncertainty in that but then to see at which point we can actually get back to normal and it is plausible it could go further than that.

“This is not to say we would be in complete lockdown for six months, but as a nation we have to be really, really responsible and keep doing what we’re all doing until we’re sure we can gradually start lifting various interventions which are likely to be spaced – based on the science and our data – until we gradually come back to a normal way of living.”

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Communities Secretary Mr Jenrick announced that the emergency footing was now raised in all parts of the country.

“This is an unprecedented step in peace time, we haven’t done anything like this since the Second World War,” he said.

“This means that we are establishing strategic coordination centres across the whole country.”