France hit a new daily record for Covid infections yesterday, registering nearly half a million fresh cases, as Britain continued its recovery.
Over the past 24 hours, 464 769 cases were reported in France. French officials are attempting to reduce the number of rising cases by issuing a string of directives.
Some of these include making children wear masks as early as 6 years old and refusing to allow them to drink in cafés or bars.
French MPs also imposed stricter vaccine passport regulations that would ban non-vaccinated persons from public life.
French president Emmanuel Macron’s hardline measures are in stark contrast to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approach.
French president Emmanuel Macron’s hardline measures are in stark contrast to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approach.
The UK Government has pledged that it will remove almost all restrictions by the end the month. France’s seven-day rolling average is 283,134, while Britain’s has 98,684, which is the lowest level since December 22.
Coronavirus is now less likely than in previous Omicron variants to cause death from Omicron-infected people.
A government advisor stated yesterday that new strains will likely be milder and less disruptive to everyday life.
The week ended January 7, 2018, saw 922 deaths recorded in England or Wales.
Although Covid might have been a factor in these deaths (or 23 percent of the cases), it wasn’t the main cause, according to the most recent Office for National Statistics data.
This compares to the 16% for Delta last November, and 10% with Alpha in January. Before widespread vaccination.
Hospital data shows a similar trend, with patients more inclined to be admitted because they have Covid.
In some regions more than half of hospital Covid patients are now so-called ‘incidental’ cases.
The UK Government has pledged that it will remove almost all restrictions by the end the month. France’s seven-day rolling average is 283,134, while Britain’s has 98,684, which is the lowest level since December 22nd.
The data comes as a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the virus is likely to evolve to become milder.
Professor Andrew Hayward said the virus may become more transmissible but it ‘doesn’t do the virus any good’ to increase in severity.
He said: ‘It looks like the Omicron variant, by becoming more transmissible, that it’s also become less severe, and we would hope that’s the general direction of travel.’
University College London Professor Hayward said that people will no longer need to have booster shots and that the frequency of jabs for flu may decrease.
He told Times Radio: ‘I think the people that we might want to think about boosting the most are the same as flu really – people with chronic illness and elderly people – and we’ll probably move into a sort of more regular annual vaccination programme, or it may not even need to be that frequent.
‘We need to wait for the evidence on that.’ Prof Hayward said he agreed the ‘pandemic will end’ and people will live with the virus continuing to transmit ‘but causing much less disruption’.
He added: ‘It will tend to, I think, settle into a seasonal pattern – we may still get quite big winters of infection but not the sort of level where we can justify wholesale societal closedown.
‘So, I think it is genuinely an optimistic picture, but we’re still not quite there yet.’
Professor Hayward said there were ‘very encouraging signs’ of cases plateauing or dropping in some places, but nobody was sure whether they will stabilise at a very high level or dip down.
Yesterday’s UK Covid-19 lab confirmed death toll was 94.432
France has a rolling 7-day average of 283,134 new cases, while Britain’s figure stands at 98,684, the lowest since December 22.