In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered the nation back into a one-month lockdown. At a news conference in London, Johnson said that the lockdown across England would start from midnight on Thursday morning and last until Dec. 2.

In some of the most onerous restrictions in Britain’s peacetime history, people will only be allowed to leave home for specific reasons such as education, work, exercise, shopping for essentials and medicines or caring for the vulnerable. Essential shops, schools, and universities will remain open, Johnson said. All non-essential retail will close.

Johnson’s imposition of stricter curbs came after scientists warned that action was needed to halt the spread of the virus if families were to have any hope of gathering at Christmas. The United Kingdom has the world’s fifth-largest official death toll and reports more than 20,000 new coronavirus cases a day, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.