Donald Trump tells Boris Johnson 'cure can't be worse than problem itself' after tier 4 rules announced

Donald Trump has rejected following the UK's example and introducing a sweeping lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The US president retweeted the BBC's report on the fresh curbs being introduced in the UK, before ruling out his administration doing likewise.

"We don’t want to have lockdowns. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself!" he tweeted.

Mr Trump's reluctance to implement a similar lockdown came as the number of cases in the US topped 17.5 million, with more than 314,000 people having died.

Britain's new restrictions, which saw London and the South East plunged into a new stricter tier 4 were introduced amid evidence that the virus had mutated into a faster-spreading form of the disease.

American scientists have also observed the virus mutating with researchers in Houston in September identifying more than 5,000 strains of Covid.

Just one of these variants were considered to have made the disease more contagious.

Decisions on whether to impose lockdowns are left to individual states, leading to a patchwork of restrictions across the US.

Mr Trump has been fiercely critical of states which have locked down, in particular Michigan, where he supported protests against measures taken by the state's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

But the new surge has seen states, irrespective of political control, imposing or reimposing curbs.

For example, Massachusetts scrapped plans to ease the restrictions as the number of cases surged.

“The days of most people doing most of the right things are probably not enough,” said the state's Republican governor, Charlie Baker.

Most of California is now under lockdown, amid fears that the state is in danger of running out of intensive care beds.

A number of states have imposed quarantine restrictions on people coming to stay within their boundaries such as Connecticut, where the authorities say that people arriving from states other than Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island must self-quarantine for 14 days.

Kansas has demanded that residents and visitors must self-quarantine for 14 days if they attended an out-of-state gathering attended by 500 people or more where masks were not worn and social distancing was not observed.