London, Dec 23 (PTI) Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will spend Christmas with her son and heir Prince Charles, and daughter-in-law Camilla, Clarence House announced on Thursday.

The 95-year-old monarch had earlier cancelled her traditional Christmas gathering at her Sandringham estate in Norfolk amid a surge in COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant.

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A much scaled down Christmas will now see Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla - Duchess of Cornwall, joining the monarch on Saturday.

"The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be with Her Majesty the Queen on Christmas Day," said a spokesperson for Clarence House, the office of Prince Charles.

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Prince Charles and Camilla are now expected to join the Queen at her Windsor Castle residence. The Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, will not be joining them after her husband, Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday and they remain in self isolation.

The monarch usually hosts her family at Sandringham in Norfolk, with crowds of well-wishers turning out to watch the royals walk to the Christmas Day service at St. Mary Magdalene Church on the estate.

However, it was revealed last week that the Queen had taken a “personal decision” to cancel those plans amid high COVID infection rates. She had also spent last Christmas at Windsor Castle due to the pandemic with husband Duke of Edinburgh, who passed away in April.

The news comes as the UK government confirmed that there are no plans to announce further COVID restrictions this week.

"We're clear that there's no need for any further restrictions of any type before Christmas but of course we will keep the situation under review," said UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

"We will keep analysing that data and if we need to do anything more we will, but nothing more is going to happen before Christmas," he said.

The minister added that people "should enjoy their Christmases with their families and their friends" but "of course, remain cautious".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)