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The Queen has cancelled her traditional pre-Christmas family lunch next week.
It is understood the decision was a precaution amid the rapid spread of Omicron, the new variant of Covid-19.
ITV’s royal correspondent Chris Ship has suggested the event could put too many people’s Christmas arrangements at risk if it went ahead.
He added: “The Queen is said to regret the decision to cancel the traditional pre-Christmas lunch with her family. But it was decided it was the right thing to do.”
It comes after the UK recorded its highest daily number of positive Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
On Wednesday, 78,610 new cases of coronavirus were recorded, more than 10,000 more than the previous record for daily infections.
The previous record came during the peak last winter, when 68,053 infections were reported on 8 January.
The Queen, who usually holds a pre-Christmas family lunch each year for her extended family, was set to go ahead with the traditional meal on Tuesday 21 December.
The lunch is attended by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as her cousins the Gloucesters, the Duke of Kent and the Michaels of Kent. The lunch takes place before she departs Buckingham Palace for her annual Christmas stay in Sandringham.
Last year, the lunch was cancelled due to lockdown restrictions.
This Christmas will be the Queen’s first since her husband, Prince Philip, died in April this year.
The Queen and Philip spent Christmas Day 2020 together at Windsor, without the rest of the family, after spending most of the year being cared for by a reduced number of staff in what was dubbed “HMS Bubble”.
The decision to cancel this year’s pre-Christmas lunch also comes after Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, urged the public to cut back on socialising in the run-up to the big day.
In a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday alongside the prime minister, Boris Johnson, Whitty said: “Don’t mix with people you don’t have to.
“I really think people should be prioritising those things – and only those things – that really matter to them,” he added.
“Because otherwise the risk of someone getting infected at something that doesn’t really matter to them and then not being able to do the things that matter to them obviously goes up.”
The Independent has contacted Buckingham Palace for a statement.
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