Local restrictions will not contain the spread of the Indian variant of Covid-19 and it should be viewed as a national problem, an Oxford professor has warned.

The highly infectious variant may spread "way beyond" the current hotspots of Bolton in Greater Manchester, Erewash in Derbyshire, Blackburn, Bedford and Sefton, said Prof James Naismith, from the University of Oxford.

Prof Naismith, a director at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, told BBC Radio 4: "I think we should view it as a countrywide problem. It will get everywhere. We keep learning this lesson, but we know that this will be the case."

He added: "When we tried locally having different restrictions in different regions that didn't really make any difference. So I don't think thinking about a localised strategy for containment will really work."