BORIS Johnson says the Government could look to ease some lockdown measures before the middle of February.

Speaking during a visit to Barnet Football Club in north London on Monday morning, the Prime Minister said some restrictions could be eased in the coming weeks.

However, he said he could not give guarantees on whether schools would return before Easter.

During the visit he said the Government will be “looking at the potential of relaxing some measures” before mid-February.

Mr Johnson added: "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.”

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Asked if he could give a firm date for schools reopening, Mr Johnson said the Government didn't want to throw away efforts to reduce infection rates.

He said: “Daily we’re looking at the data and trying to work out when we’re going to be able to lift restrictions.

“Schools obviously will be a priority but I don’t think anybody would want to see the restrictions lifted so quickly while the rate of infection is still very high so as to lead to another great spread of infection.

“We’ve now got the R down below 1 across the whole of the country, that’s a great achievement, we don’t want to see a huge surge of infection just when we’ve got the vaccination programme going so well and people working so hard.

“I understand why people want to get a timetable from me today, what I can tell you is we’ll tell you, tell parents, tell teachers as much as we can as soon as we can.”

Boris Johnson also said the Government was “definitely looking at” the possibility of travellers arriving in the UK being required to quarantine in hotels.