BORIS Johnson said 'there is light ahead' thanks to the coronavirus vaccination programme.

At a press conference this evening, Monday, confirming the roadmap out of lockdown, Mr Johnson said it was time for the jabs to start replacing restrictions as a way of protecting against Covid-19.

"We cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that have separated families and loved ones for too long, threatened the livelihoods of millions, kept pupils out of school," he said.

"Thanks to the vaccinations there is light ahead, leading us to a spring and a summer, which I think will be seasons of hope, looking and feeling incomparably better for us all."

The Prime Minister also promised the Government would do "whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods" across the UK while the restrictions continue.

Professor Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, explained the importance of the five-week gap between stages in the road map.

Speaking at the Downing Street press conference, he said: "The reason for that is that inevitably for each one of these steps we are taking a risk which is an accepted risk - there is a risk to this, and everybody in the country I'm sure understands this.

"And what we want to do is after each set of risks with a particular set of opening up, wait until we have data that tells us, has this done what we expected it to do, have we actually ended up in a slightly worse place than we thought we would, or have indeed we ended up in a slightly better place?

"But I think the big worry is, have things got slightly worse than we were expecting, and we cannot measure that in less than about four weeks because it takes that long for the effect to be seen and the data to come through and be analysed.

"So that's the reason for the five-week gap, because it allows us to see whether it's had an effect and then to make a judgment as to whether that's material to making the next decision."

The Prime Minister assured there is enough vaccination supply to get every adult the first dose of the coronavirus jab by the end of July.

Speaking at the Downing Street briefing, he said: "We've got to make sure that we have the supply in place for everybody to get their second vaccination within 12 weeks, as well as giving every adult, as we said already, a vaccination by the end of July.

"We do believe we have the supplies in place to keep up that rhythm and that timetable.

"And we're looking the whole time to source more where we can from our suppliers according to the contracts that we've already signed."

He said the UK will support vaccination efforts around the world, adding: "There's no point in having a vaccination programme that is simply confined to one country, it's a global pandemic, we need a global vaccination programme."