THE Health Secretary is set to lead the Covid press briefing tonight as the Government are said to be "looking at the potential" of relaxing some measures next month.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock will hold the Downing Street press briefing at 5pm today, a spokesperson for Number 10 has this afternoon confirmed.

It comes as the Prime Minister Boris Johnson hinted that some lockdown restrictions could beased before mid-February as he hailed the roll-out of the vaccination programme.

But he could not give a guarantee that schools in England would return before the Easter period.

This morning, he said: "I do think now this massive achievement has been made of rolling out this vaccination programme, I think people want to see us making sure we don’t throw that away by having a premature relaxation and then another big surge of infection.

“I totally understand the frustrations of parents, I really thank teachers for what they’re doing, the immense efforts they’re going to to teach kids online, and the Government has provided a lot of laptops… I know that’s no substitute for direct face-to-face learning.

“Believe me there’s nothing I want to do more than reopen schools, I’ve fought to keep schools open for as long as I possibly could.

“We want to see schools back as fast as possible, we want to do that in a way that is consistent with fighting the epidemic and keeping the infection rate down.”