Police visited pro-democracy news outlets Apple Daily, InMedia and StandNews on Wednesday with search warrants demanding documents relating to candidates who ran in last July's democratic primary elections. No members of staff were arrested and the newsrooms were not raided. The warrants prohibit the disclosure of the information requested by the police, according to StandNews. Both StandNews and Apple Daily had hosted election forums for candidates in the lead-up to July's primaries.

Officers also entered the law firm of former pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho and John Clancy, the treasurer of democracy group Power for Democracy who helped organise the primaries.

Press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the search warrants and visits, calling the police action "an apparent intimidation attempt."

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At Wednesday's parliamentary debate Johnson said the nation's emergence from the "lockdown cocoon will not be a big bang, but a gradual unwrapping." He added the country would come out of the newly imposed lockdown, "carefully brick by brick until the nation was free from the current confinement."

After announcing the new legislation in the House of Commons today, MPs were told the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) law would be scheduled to run until the end of March. At risk of causing a major pushback, the PM added it was "not because we expect the full national lockdown to continue until then, but to allow a steady, controlled and evidence led move down through the tiers on a regional basis."

Different regions of the UK have imposed their own lockdown measures. England uses the tier system. It consists of five grades of lockdown severity. Tier one requires those with weakened immune systems to shield from the virus, whilst tier five involves every citizen and is a full national lockdown. After MPs argued for more information as to when the lockdown would end Johnson said parliament "should, and will inevitably" get a chance to debate the final end date for the lockdown before the end of March. He added that he hoped this would "be substantially before the end of March" and that the reopening of schools was a major "priority."

Johnson said the moment when the nation can move out of lockdown "may come after the February school's half-term." However, he added the country should "remain extremely cautious about the timetable ahead."

The comments caused Conservative MP Jeremy Wright to challenge the prime minister to be "more definitive" about the numbers of people that must be vaccinated before restrictions can be lifted. Johnson replied to this by stating there would be "substantial opportunities to relax rules around about February 15," but stressed this would only happen if high-risk people and priority groups had received the vaccination.