The country is “in a different world” from when the Covid pandemic started, Boris Johnson has said, meaning the last remaining restrictions can begin to be lifted from next week.

Ahead of an announcement on Monday about the government’s “living with Covid” strategy, the prime minister signalled free mass testing would end imminently and told people to return to the office and “get their confidence back”.

“We’ve reached a stage where we think you can shift the balance away from state mandation – away from banning certain courses of action, compelling certain courses of action – in favour of encouraging personal responsibility,” he said on Sunday.

Concerns have been raised by some scientists and health experts about the mooted plans to drop the legal requirement for people to self-isolate, scrap the majority of free lateral flow tests and end most contact tracing.

Johnson did not rule out restrictions being re-imposed. He said: “I don’t want to go back to that kind of non-pharmaceutical intervention. I want to be able to address the problems of the pandemic with a vaccine-led approach … but I’m afraid you’ve got to be humble in the face of nature.”

Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, told the same programme that the move “seems very premature” and used the analogy of a football team being one goal ahead and then taking off their best defender in the closing minutes of the game.

Thousands of work coaches will be hired under a new government employment programme to help those who have lost their jobs during the pandemic, amid fresh warnings of an unemployment crisis as the furlough scheme ends.

The £238m job entry targeted support (Jets) scheme will help jobseekers who have been out of work for at least three months. It will be available to people receiving the “all work related requirements” universal credit payment, or the new style jobseeker’s allowance.

The Department for Work and Pensions says Jets will “ramp up support” to help people back to employment, with specialist advice on how to move into growing sectors, as well as CV and interview coaching. It is recruiting an additional 13,500 coaches to help deliver the programme.

The move comes as economists forecast a sharp increase in unemployment this winter, with employers such as Rolls-Royce, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Boots and John Lewis all announcing layoffs since the pandemic began. More than a third of businesses plan to cut jobs before the end of the year, a survey last week found.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who will give a speech to the Conservative party conference on Monday, said: “Our unprecedented support has protected millions of livelihoods and businesses since the start of the pandemic, but I’ve always been clear that we can’t save every job.

A new three-tier lockdown system is being planned for England, with leaked government documents paving the way for potential harsher restrictions including the closure of pubs and a ban on all social contact outside of household groups.

The draft traffic-light-style plan, seen by the Guardian, is designed to simplify the current patchwork of localised restrictions, which apply to about a quarter of the UK. It also reveals tougher measures that could be imposed by the government locally or nationally if Covid cases are not brought under control.

On Sunday the number of cases jumped by 22,961 after it emerged that more than 15,000 test results had not previously been transferred on to computer systems, including for contact tracers.

Called the “Covid-19 Proposed Social Distancing Framework” and dated 30 September, it has not yet been signed off by No 10 and measures could still be watered down.

Alert level 3 – the most serious – contains tougher measures than any seen so far in local lockdowns since the start of the pandemic. They include:

• Closure of hospitality and leisure businesses.
• No social contact outside your household in any setting.
• Restrictions on overnight stays away from home.
• No organised non-professional sports permitted or other communal hobby groups and activities, such as social clubs in community centres.
• Places of worship can remain open.

Schools are not mentioned in the draft. A government source said this was because Boris Johnson had made clear that classroom closures would be a last resort and the reopening of schools was considered within Whitehall to have been a relative success.

Any attempts to impose more stringent measures are expected to provoke renewed anger among Conservative backbenchers, who are likely to demand a vote in parliament should they come into force.