"This is not the time simply to end the lockdown this week," the prime minister says.

"Instead we are taking the first careful steps to modify our measures.

"We now need to stress that anyone who can’t work from home, for instance those in construction or manufacturing, should be actively encouraged to go to work."

In his televised address, he set out a roadmap for change - covering rules in England.

Boris Johnson says there will be five alert levels in the system, with level one meaning the disease is no longer present in the UK and level five being “the most critical – the kind of situation we could have had if the NHS had been overwhelmed”.

The PM says we have been at level four during the lockdown, but “thanks to your sacrifice we are now in a position to begin to move in steps to level three”.

However, he says “everyone will have a role to play in keeping the R down… by staying alert and following the rules.”

And he adds there are two more things to do “to keep pushing the number of infections down”.

“We must reverse rapidly the awful epidemics in care homes and in the NHS, and though the numbers are coming down sharply now, there is plainly much more to be done.

“And if we are to control this virus, then we must have a world-beating system for testing potential victims, and for tracing their contacts.”

The PM reiterates the government’s five tests for ending lockdown: protecting the NHS, seeing a sustained fall in death rates, a fall in the rate of infection, sorting out “challenges” - such as procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) - and stopping the so-called R number rising up over one and causing “exponential growth” of the virus.

He says we “cannot move forward unless we satisfy the five tests”.

Johnson announces the previewed plans by launching a new “Covid Alert System” which, he says, will be run by a new Joint Biosecurity Centre.

He says the level the country is at will be determined primarily by the R number and the number of coronavirus cases, and “will tell us how tough we have to be in our social distancing measures”, namely “the lower the level, the fewer the measures, the higher the level, the tougher and stricter we will have to be”.

Boris Johnson says he will set out the plans he is announcing in Parliament and take questions from the public on Monday.

And he says before he finalised his plan, he consulted “across the political spectrum and across all four nations of the UK”.

The PM says different parts of the country are “experiencing the pandemic at different rates” and the government should be “flexible in our response”.

But, he adds: “I believe that as prime minister of the United Kingdom – Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland - there is a strong resolve to defeat this together, and today a general consensus on what we could do.

“And I stress could. Because although we have a plan, it is a conditional plan.”

A new Covid alert system will be put in place in England to track the virus, the prime minister confirms.

The system will use a scale of one to five and the alert level will be "determined primarily by R and the number of coronavirus cases".

Read more about the alert system here.

Image source, Getty Images

After offering more thanks to the public for protecting the NHS and “saving many thousands of lives”, the PM says it would be “madness now to throw away that achievement by allowing a second spike”.

He adds: “We must stay alert. We must continue to control the virus and save lives.”

Johnson says progress so far has “come at colossal cost to our way of life”, referencing shops, pubs, restaurants, and the “fear” people have for their livelihoods and their mental and physical wellbeing.

He says: “So I want to provide tonight - for you - the shape of a plan to address both fears.

“Both to beat the virus and provide the first sketch of a road map for reopening society.

“A sense of the way ahead, and when and how and on what basis we will take the decisions to proceed.”

The prime minister says "it would be madness now" to throw away the UK's "achievements" in curbing the number of coronavirus deaths "by allowing a second spike".

Boris Johnson begins his speech recognising it has been “almost two months since the people of this country began to put up with restrictions on their freedom”, saying it was “of a kind that we have never seen before in peace or war”.

He thanks the public for having “shown the good sense to support those rules overwhelmingly” and “put up with all the hardships of that programme of social distancing”.

He calls the coronavirus “the most vicious threat this country has faced in my lifetime”.

Johnson adds: “And though the death toll has been tragic, and the suffering immense, and though we grieve for all those we have lost, it is a fact that by adopting those measures, we prevented this country from being engulfed by what could have been a catastrophe in which the reasonable worst case scenario was half a million fatalities.”

Image source, Getty Images

It's been the talk of the country all day and it is only minutes away now. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will speak to the nation about the next steps in the battle to contain the novel coronavirus in the UK.

He is expected to announce the launch of an alert system for tracking coronavirus in England and set out a "roadmap, a menu of options" for how the country might begin to ease the lockdown.

Mr Johnson might also talk about the need to quarantine visitors at UK airports in the coming weeks.

He has already unveiled the new "stay alert, control the virus, save lives" slogan, which will also not apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The devolved nations' decision to extend their lockdowns for another three weeks could mean Mr Johnson will not announce immediate alterations to England's restrictions.

Professional footballers nearing the end of their contracts "are in no-man's land" amid the uncertainty caused by coronavirus, Ross County defender Richard Foster tells BBC Radio Scotland.

Foster is one of around 90 Premiership players nearing the conclusion of their current deals this month.

All Scottish football was suspended in March because of the virus pandemic, with resumption not possible until June and unlikely until later in the year.

"You don't know whether to stick or twist," 34-year-old Foster tells Sportsound. "At no point in the seven weeks has anyone mentioned that there are going to be hundreds of football players out of work, unable to pay bills, to pay mortgages, to function and with no real opportunity then to move forward and go anywhere."

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have joined the criticism of the new "stay alert" lockdown message being formally announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 19:00 BST.

The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all said they are keeping the "stay at home" slogan.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has warned people might be "puzzled" by the change, saying "there is no room for nuance" when dealing with a public health crisis.

LibDem acting leader Sir Ed Davey said changing the slogan "makes the police's job near-impossible and may cause considerable alarm", while Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham called the updated advice "too ambiguous" and "unenforceable".

Inverness Caledonian Thistle say they will tell any independent inquiry about "bullying and threats" against them prior to April's Scottish Professional Football League vote to end the lower-league season because of the Covid-19 crisis.

A request by Rangers - backed by Hearts and Stranraer - for an inquiry will be put to clubs on Tuesday.

Championship club Inverness claim SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster knew of the alleged behaviour.

The SPFL provided no comment when asked for a response. However, prior to the Caley Thistle statement being issued, Mr Doncaster told BBC Radio Scotland he had received no formal complaints of bullying.

He added that clubs will suffer if legal action is taken against the governing body, with Hearts considering a "formal challenge" if they are relegated should the Premiership be curtailed.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's address from No.10 is expected to set out a "roadmap" for easing lockdown restrictions, although First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has already stressed it will not apply in Scotland.

There will be live coverage of the address, from 19:00 BST, on BBC One Scotland, BBC News channel with sign language interpreter, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live.

What should we be looking out for in Mr Johnson's speech? Click below to find out.

Image source, Getty Images

Despite removing the 'once-a-day' limit on exercise outdoors, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon insists the advice in Scotland remains 'stay at home' despite a new 'stay alert' slogan introduced by the UK government.

This is what the UK government is now advising, even though the official advice in Scotland remains 'Stay at Home'.

Image source, Getty Images

The Guardian's Severin Carroll asks whether the new UK government slogan to 'stay alert' needs a disclaimer, so it is clear that it is for England only.

Nicola Sturgeon said she did not specifically ask for the words ‘for England only’ to be put on the logo but has asked the prime minister to be "very careful" when he is giving any messages, or speaking, to specify 'for England only',

The first minister acknowledges that, when it comes to border control and quarantine, Boris Johnson will be speaking later about the whole of the UK, but when he talks about lockdown, he should only be speaking about England - "just as I am only speaking for Scotland when I say the advice is ‘stay at home’."

Mixed messaging is not inevitable, Ms Sturgeon adds, saying "people are perfectly capable of working out where they live and which advice they should follow".

Kathleen Nutt from The National asks about plans to deal with a backlog in cancer screening.

The first minister says they are considering how to resume services which have been paused.

She said the intention was to be able to pick up where they left off so that nobody should miss out.

Health secretary Jeane Freeman has revealed that an advertising campaign will begin tomorrow "inviting people to come and join us as contact tracers" as part of the planned "Test, Trace, Isolate" strategy the Scottish government believes it needs before beginning to end the lockdown.

She said health protection teams first had to identify how many more people locally they could bring in before the advertising campaign began.

She says Scotland is also "ramping up our testing capacity" and will be at 8,000 tests per day in NHS laboratories by the middle of this week but needs to increase that further to reach 15,500.

It is also "scaling up "existing digital tools that we use to track infections" and identifying the support that needs to be in place to help people asked to self-isolate.

Michael Blackley, from the Daily Mail, wonders if Nicola Sturgeon fears that any rise in infection rates from an earlier lockdown in England could have a detrimental affect on Scotland.

The first minister says that it is fine for some parts of the UK to move out of lockdown at different rates if based on evidence but points out that she has just been reading figures from Germany, where the infection rate has risen again after easing measures there.

"That tells us that the margins for error here are really narrow and it doesn't take many more social interactions between different households for it to rise again," she says.

Interim chief medical officer Gregor Smith adds that there has been slow progress in reducing the rate of infection in Scotland but "insufficient evidence" that any easing of the lockdown would not lead to another rise.