TThe Vaccine Minister said she was “not sure” the number of Britons stranded in self-isolation, amid calls to reduce the required quarantine period from seven days to five.

Maggie Throup was also unable to say how many NHS Trusts had declared critical incidents or how many young people between the ages of 15 and 17 had been vaccinated.

Asked how many people have been isolated amid reports that the figure has reached one million, Ms Throup told Sky News: ‘I’m not sure what the real figure is, but I think what was shown on Christmas is that a lot of people have caught the disease.

“The omicron variant is very transmissible, but what is very good news is that it does not appear to cause as severe a disease as the other variants.”

To the question “maybe you just don’t know?” When she did not respond to a question about the number of hospitals reporting incidents, Ms Throup admitted, “To be honest, I didn’t get an update this morning.”

Robert Halfon, the conservative chairman of the education select committee, last night called on ministers to “seriously consider” reducing the period of isolation for healthy children who test positive for the coronavirus.

Tim Spector, the British epidemiologist behind the Zoe Covid study app, said there had been “no real changes” in Covid deaths over the past month and criticized ” overly cautious isolation rules ”, and added:“ Let’s reduce this to five days ”.

Follow the latest updates below.