Anyone arriving in the U.

K will have to present a negative test on will still have to self isolate for up to 10 days.

The new border restrictions will be reviewed in a month's time.

It comes as the prime minister urged people to stay at home this weekend with hospitals across the UK under extraordinary pressure.

More than 37,000 people are currently being treated for coronavirus, a record number with the peak not expected for another 10 days in most places.

A quarter of the patients are under the age of 55.

Tonight.

Hospitals in Nottingham and Newcastle, amongst others, are standing ready to accept intensive care patients from London to try to ease the pressure on the worst hit areas.

But the prime minister said there was hope with more than 3.2 million people already vaccinated in the UK here's our health editor, Keep him.

This hospital was one of the first to fill up with seriously ill covert patients last March.

Now the same thing's happening again, only more so like many other hospitals in the southeast of England.

North Week Park is under severe strain.

There are more patients now than there were in March and April, May on def.

Those numbers continue, then.

It doesn't matter how good we are looking after Kobe.

We'll just run out of beds.

Because of pressure on critical care units like that.

Hospitals in Nottingham have been asked to take co vid patients from London and the Southeast on Newcastle is also set to receive patients from further south.

Even London trust leaders say hospitals around England have been asked to help by boosting capacity.

We know we now are moving patients, a small number of patients from London to other parts of the country, because London's critical care capacity is very, very full, and that's not something we would normally want to do.

But I hope in one sense it's a reassuring sign of how far the NHS will go to treat every single patient who needs care.

Some hospitals in London and the south east of England are so stretched that patients are having to be moved hundreds of miles for treatment.

Does this not suggest that not enough was done by the government to prepare the NHS for the second wave.

A huge amount was done to prepare the NHS for and has continuously for the last.

Yeah, Onda Actually, even in in the in London, where the situation has bean toughest, the London NHS has been under huge, huge, huge pressure.

But they really have been coping magnificently.

A social media site has brought together impressions from the NHS Frontline.

One doctor said as he died in the hospital bed all alone I held his hand saying everything was going to be okay.

I realized now that me saying those things was more for me than for him.

Another entry said I became an A and e nurse because I feel like we make a big difference to our patients.

But with this virus, we don't get that.

Another doctor reported my grand parents both died of co vid five days apart in different hospitals.

Seeing all this loss and suffering at work is so much harder when I've been on the other side of it, a swell admissions to hospitals like this one in capturing involved patients who got the virus a couple of weeks before.

As for new cases, there are tentative signs of a change of direction.

Recent case numbers show in the last week Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have all seen case numbers fall.

It's the same in England, with more cases in a bigger population, including dips in hotspots like London.

But in some council areas, like Knowsley Halton in the Isle of Wight, there have been increases.

Officials believe the peak of infections may have passed in some areas, but not hospital admissions.

It takes a while between people first getting infected.

Thio getting ill enough to go to hospital so that peak will be a bit later in every area of the country, a bit later than the peak of infections on then.

The peak of deaths, unfortunately, is a bit later still, so the peak of deaths, I fear, is in the future, a decisive reversal off.

Those trends may only come once there being widespread vaccinations, but progress is being made, with the daily total now hitting 300,000 for the first time.

Hugh Pym, BBC News on You can see a full report from Norfolk Park Hospital on Newsnight tonight on BBC two at half past 10, so the U.

K's borders are being tightened from Monday morning.

But for how long?

On what impact will it have?

His our transport correspondent Caroline Davis, while most of us are being told to stay at home today, saw another announcement about international travel.

Yesterday, passengers from South America and Portugal were banned from traveling to the UK to stop the spread of a new covert variant from Brazil.

Today, the prime minister announced another measure to tighten up travel to protect us against the risk of as yet unidentified new strains.

We will also temporally close all travel corridors from 400 hours on Monday.

Today's announcement is not a travel ban.

It's about quarantine.

Combined with earlier policies, it now means from Monday anyone traveling to the UK will have to show they have a negative covert test less than 72 hours before they depart.

When they arrived, they must now quarantine for 10 days, no matter where they flown from in the world or pay for a covert test on the fifth day.

If it's negative, they can leave quarantine early as well as airports.

The policy applies to the Eurostar and seaports, but won't apply to anyone traveling within the U.

K.

Or Ireland or to some jobs like hauliers.

The government say that this step is now needed because it's difficult to predict where new variants might come from.

Passenger flights are already significantly down.

Heathrow Airport handled just over a million passengers in December, down nearly 83% on last year, has been criticism that this policy would have been more effective if it had been introduced earlier.

Lots of the British public will say, Look, we're really worried about the variant In other countries, Um, other countries have taken measures we were slow to it on day will be wondering why this didn't happen sooner.

And why the delay now?

Till Monday.

During the summer, the travel industry saw travel corridors as a lifeline that kept people going on holiday.

Today, many say they support the suspension so long as travel corridors can come back later this year.

If we're gonna have an aviation sector coming out of this, we need to open up in in the summer.

We look forward to having conversations with the government about that, but for the here and now, we're absolutely clear that we will support the government.

This is one of many travel policies the government of introduced.

The question now is whether it will make a significant difference in keeping the country safe.

Caroline Davis, BBC News.

Our deputy political editor, Vicky Young, is in Westminster significant changes to the borders almost a year after the pandemic began.

So why now?

Yeah.

I mean, the government has been criticized for not being as strict as other countries.

What they've done is to use quarantine as the main tool, their point being that if someone comes into the country, if they're not going out, then they're not spreading it.

And that's the approach they have taken.

Other logic for doing it now is because they say off these new variants.

We've been very good at isolating them and finding them once here, of course they want to.

Now try and find them before they get here on.

They can't be sure where they are coming from now.

One minister described all this is a safety first approach.

They say they don't want to fall at the last hurdle.

So what is going to get us over that hurdle when it is?

Of course, the vaccination program.

And here there has been some remarkable progress.

We've heard that over three million people in the UK now vaccinated on they don't want to have that good work and progress undermined by new variants coming in.

So some good news amid some still bad news on deaths and hospitalizations.

Vicky Young in Westminster.

Thank you.