The military is preparing to step in to help NHS trusts cope with the impact of soaring Covid cases.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the health service would be moved to a "war footing" as the country experienced the "fastest growth ever known" in infections.

It comes after increasing numbers of public services had to resort to emergency plans to mitigate staff shortages caused by Omicron.

At least six hospital trusts have declared critical incidents – where priority services may be under threat.

Speaking at a press conference this evening, Mr Johnson said that while the country had the chance to "ride out the Omicron wave", the military would be stepping in to aid the health services that needed it most.

"We have a chance to find a way to live with this virus. The weeks ahead will be challenging and there will be disruption to some services, but if we all play our part the disruption will be far less great than a national lockdown," he added.

"As our NHS moves to a war footing, I will be recommending to cabinet tomorrow that we continue with Plan B, because the public have responded and changed their behaviour, changed your behaviour, buying invaluable time to get boosters in arms and help the NHS to cope with the Omicron wave."

'We have a chance to find a way to live with this virus.'

The PM had said yesterday that he would “make sure that we look after our NHS any way that we can”.

But health leaders warned the health service was “in a state of crisis”, and a head teacher predicted remote learning could return if school staff were struck down with the virus.

Mr Johnson also announced that 100,000 critical workers would be given daily lateral flow tests to help keep essential services open.

Firms working in areas such as food processing, transport and the Border Force are to be sent kits every working day from the start of next week.

Critical workers will be able to take a test on every working day and the provision of precautionary testing will be for an initial five weeks.

Earlier today, South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay urged the Prime Minister to cut the quarantine period to five days as he claimed the country was in a "semi-lockdown".

He said workers who were "perfectly well" were having to take time off as one million people self-isolated after catching Covid.

The Conservative MP told MailOnline: "We’re almost facing a semi-lockdown because of people being off work who are perfectly well. You couldn’t make that up.

"The US must have done a lot of work on it... and they have come up with five days as the answer. Perhaps it is."

The Tory member wrote yesterday in his weekly newsletter about his views on introducing further restrictions in the UK.

He said it was an "increasingly sensible move" not to impose the "most extreme restrictive measures" with coastal towns benefitting from "fairly good trading, with a large number of visitors coming to Thanet".

He added: "The more draconian measures introduced by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are looking increasingly daft as the high number of Omicron infections are simply not translating into extreme pressure for the NHS."

Mr Johnson also used today's press conference to reinforce the need to get a booster jab, saying that 90% of those currently in intensive care do not have their third vaccination, while 60% have not had any jab at all.

"There are still around nine million eligible people not yet boosted," he added, "and there are two million slots available across the UK this week alone.

"It is already the case to travel to some countries you need boosters, and this will increasingly become the norm.

"If you haven’t done it already, get yourself boosted."

In education, the Education Secretary said schools should be prepared to merge classes into large groups if staff levels dipped too low.

Mike Walters, chair of the Kent Association of Headteachers, which represents 600 primary, secondary and special schools, has warned about a shortfall of supply teaching staff as more teachers self-isolate after catching the virus.

Mr Walters, who is executive principal at Canterbury's St Anselm's Catholic School, said: "We will try to stay open for as long as possible and see what happens.

“However, if we have insufficient school staff to carry out teaching, we may have to take decisions to close schools over the next few weeks.

"It's a perfect storm of a big increase in demand for teaching and a lack of supply teachers."