Britain could face harsh restrictions for many months to come, Boris Johnson and his chief scientists warned as figures suggested more than 1 million people in England are infected with coronavirus, or one in every 50. The prime minister said the plan to emerge from a newly-imposed national lockdown in mid-February was subject to “lots of caveats, lot of ifs”. He refused to guarantee that children would be fully back at school before the summer, calling this a “fundamental hope”. Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, warned some restrictions on normal life may still be necessary next winter. Covid-19 would not disappear “in a single bound”, he said, though he said he believed measures would be significantly eased through the warmer months. The Office for National Statistics figures revealed on Tuesday that 2% of the UK population were estimated to have had the virus between 27 December and 2 January. Some 1.1 million people in private households were infected with Covid-19 in England, or one in 50 people, rising to one in 30 in London, the Downing Street briefing was told. The figure was one in 45 for south-east England, eastern England and north-west England. More than 60,000 positive tests were recorded, and the 830 daily deaths were the highest since New Year’s Eve. The prime minister said almost a quarter of the over-80s, who make up one of the most vulnerable demographics, had now been vaccinated against the virus, and the UK would release daily immunisation totals from next week. Unveiling England’s third national lockdown on Monday, including the closure of all schools, Johnson said more than 13 million of the most vulnerable people should receive the first dose of a Covid vaccine by mid-February, including all over-70s. Johnson claimed it might be possible to start relaxing the lockdown measures from February but conceded this “depends on a number of things”. “Provided we don’t learn anything new about the virus that we don’t yet understand, there’s not some new mutation that we haven’t currently bargained for; provided the vaccine rollout goes according to to plan; provided the vaccine is as efficacious as we think it is; but above all, provided that everybody follows the guidance now,” he said. “I wouldn’t put it any stronger than that.” The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said the figures for England were a result of Johnson’s failure to act quickly as she defended her decision to close places of worship, which remain open in England. “It is one of the points of difference between Scotland and the UK but so is the fact we decided to act much earlier in the curve of this wave of the pandemic to get it under control,” Sturgeon said during a coronavirus press briefing. “We are trying to act as cautiously as we can at the moment to stop this situation deteriorating any further.”Asked about the vaccination plan, Whitty called it “realistic, but not easy”, and told people to brace for potential restrictions for months to come. Whitty said risk levels from Covid would mean measures were “lifted by degrees possibly at different rates in different parts of the country”. “We’ll then get over time to a point where people say this level of risk is something society is prepared to tolerate and lift right down to almost no restrictions at all,” he said. “We might have to bring in a few in next winter for example, that’s possible, because winter will benefit the virus.” Senior Conservatives have urged the prime minister to ramp up vaccination efforts further. Greg Clark, chair of the science and technology committee, which will quiz the vaccine minister, Nadhim Zahawi, next week, said it was vital the government met expectations this time around. “The whole country is anxiously awaiting the release from lockdown that the vaccine programme provides,” he said. “It is essential that all the lessons are learned from mass operations like test and trace to ensure that it runs smoothly and at the fastest possible pace.” Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee, said it was vital the vaccine programme had advanced sufficiently by half-term in order to let schools reopen. “Nothing is more important now that getting an Israeli-style vaccination system up and running. It is huge credit that a million have been done already but we now know this is the only way out of this lockdown,” he said. One Conservative backbencher said they found Johnson’s promises on the timetable for vaccinating vulnerable groups “somewhat tricky to believe” given the lack of detail and transparency. They said: “Hopes are very high, but we’ve all learned to be very cautious about these big promises and specific deadlines. It’s not just that they’re hard to meet, but the virus changes – there’s political and medical factors at play here.” In a TV address on Tuesday night, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said the UK should aim to be the first fully vaccinated nation, which would require a “round-the-clock vaccination programme”. Johnson said: “And when you consider that the average age of Covid fatalities is in the 80s, you can see the importance of what we have already achieved. And that is why I believe that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was right to draw up a programme aimed at saving the most lives the fastest.” Johnson said the UK had now vaccinated more than 1.3 million people and would have almost 1,000 vaccination sites across the country by the end of this week, with seven mass vaccination centres opening in places such as sports stadiums and exhibition centres next week. He said the government was aiming for “the maximum possible transparency about this vaccine rollout with more detail on Thursday and daily updates from Monday so that you can see day by day and jab by jab how much progress we are making”. Defending his decision to reopen schools a day before closing them again, Johnson said he had hoped to see evidence that tier 4 measures were working to bring the infection rate down. “The tier 4 measures were something that we wanted to evaluate and over the course of the the days leading up to Sunday … we were hoping that we would start to see some impact and that we would be able to keep schools open, because keeping schools open is an absolute priority for this country. It was clear that we’ve got to a situation where tier 4 on its own couldn’t be relied upon to get the virus under control.”