The prime minister has confirmed no further Covid restrictions will be put in place in England before Christmas. He said there was currently not enough evidence to justify tougher measures before Christmas but curbs could be imposed after 25 December. A bailout package worth about £1bn for businesses losing trade because of the Omicron surge was announced by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on Tuesday. The funding will primarily help firms in the leisure and hospitality sector, and follows concerns that they have faced cancelled bookings. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said Labour “will be going through the details” of the new measures for businesses, adding the government had been “dragged kicking and screaming” to announce them. Representatives of businesses that run nightclubs, music venues and events have responded to Rishi Sunak’s support package calling it “inadequate”. Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, said newly-announced support for the culture sector was “far too little” and “borders on the insulting”. Scotland’s Hogmanay street parties are cancelled, while sporting events will be spectator-free for the next three weeks, Nicola Sturgeon announced, while reassuring the Scottish public they will not have to change their Christmas Day plans. All sporting events in Wales will be held behind closed doors from Boxing Day due to the surge in coronavirus cases, the Welsh government has announced. The economy minister, Vaughan Gething, announced the new measures for both indoor and outdoor sporting events. Scientists have reacted with dismay to Boris Johnson’s decision not to impose fresh restrictions to curb the spread of Omicron, emphasising that waiting until the new year would “almost certainly be too late to have a material impact on the epidemic”. A top scientist has said we “cannot afford to cross our fingers and hope this crisis blows over”. Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome, said in a statement: “As we have learned from the very beginning of this pandemic, it’s better to act sooner than later.” The effect that lockdowns have on people’s lives is as bad as going to hospital, Sir Iain Duncan Smith has warned amid the rise of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. The UK government borrowed £17.4bn in November, outstripping economists’ predictions and suggesting debt could far overshoot officials’ forecasts if the Omicron coronavirus variant slows the economy as expected. The DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has tested positive for Covid, he has announced on Twitter. He said he fell ill after returning from London last week. A total of 897,979 booster and third doses of Covid-19 vaccine were reported in the UK on Monday, new figures show. The is the second highest figure on record, behind 940,606 doses on Saturday 18 December. A further 90,629 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the UK as of 9am on Tuesday, the government said. The government said a further 172 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19. That is all for today from the UK blog but do join me as I continue our Covid coverage on our global live blog below: