The Covid crisis in Britain continued to rise today, despite the Omicron crisis spiralling. Cases are increasing by 20% over last week. Boris Johnson warned that the super-mutant variant of Omicron is becoming more transmittable.
The government reported that there had been 45,691 additional positive tests in the past 24 hour, an increase of 15% over last Tuesday’s number of 39,716.
Omicron may now account for nearly 2 per cent in all new infections according to experts, which means up to 1000 people might be getting sick every day.
However, the true toll is only 437, as only a small fraction of samples have been analysed. It is spreading in many parts of the country, according to health officials.
Hospital admissions remain flat despite cases still rising, up 0.7% on the week before. However they are likely to increase in the next few days due to infections. Already, death rates are rising by 13.2 percent to 180.
After Johnson, today’s Cabinet member, told ministers that Omicron doesn’t spread as easily as Delta. However, he acknowledged that the preliminary data suggested that Omicron might.
Although there were dire warnings of the imminent threat from Britain, ministers have publicly denied that No10 would resort to its Plan B strategy. This includes working at home with vaccine passports.
Today’s Mr Johnson official spokeswoman, however, suggested the possibility for another holiday lockdown and said that the Government would respond’swiftly if necessary.
However, real-life data indicates that this variant could be less severe than others. None of the recorded cases in the UK – which are just a fraction of the true toll – have been hospitalised, Health Secretary Sajid Javid revealed last night, mirroring reports from doctors in the ground zero of the outbreak in South Africa.
Omicron will continue to be a threat to the NHS, even though it may not prove more deadly than the other varieties. That is because the NHS has to deal with a large number of patients who are likely will become ill.
Scientists believe booster jabs will provide high protection against Omicron-related severe illness or death, even though vaccines are less effective in preventing it.
No10 last week announced that it will increase the booster program to 500,000 jabs daily and provide a third dose for all 53 million British adults before the end of January in order to protect against the coming wave. The scheme appears to be in a rut with only 330,000 doses being distributed across Britain. On average, only 378,000 people are administered daily.
Professor Tim Spector was an eminent epidemiologist who claimed Omicron infections were increasing at a rate of doubling each day. If the current pace of Omicron infections continues, the graph above shows that Omicron cases could surpass 100,000 daily by New Year’s Day.
Coronavirus chaos continues another day
- Johnson claimed that Britain’s Covid boost campaign is moving more quickly than anticipated, in spite of official data showing that the country still has a long way to go before it reaches its goal of reaching 500,000 per day.
- The truth was that none of the over 100 partygoers were caught. OmicronNorwegian ChristmasParty is deemed the largest in the world coronavirus super-spreader event have fallen seriously unwell;
- A study suggested wearing a face mask — regardless of how flimsy or tight-fitting it is — is better than social distancing at preventing you from catching Covid;
- Nicola Sturgeon ramped up work from home orders for Scots — demanding businesses make sure people stay away from offices;
- Scientists warn that side effects from the Covid jab may be almost as severe as the early signs of the virus.
- Ofsted’s damning report found that nearly all children in England have fallen behind their education, and were suffering as a consequence of the Covid lockdown.
- A man killed himself, his wife and three young girls after he faked a Covid jab certificate and feared his children would be taken away when it was discovered.
Today’s figures show Britain dished out 329,165 boosters today, taking the total number of adults receiving a third dose up to 20.9million (36.4 per cent).
All eligible adults won’t be boosted at the current rate (around 380,000 boosters per day) until February 10,
The number of people dying with the virus took the UK’s total amount of fatalities within 28 days of catching the virus up to 145,826.
Independent figures examining whether Covid was listed on the death certificate indicate that there are now 170,001 fatalities.
According to Dr Jeffrey Barrett of the Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Covid surveillance, Omicron is likely to be the dominant UK strain “within weeks” rather than the months initially expected.
Scientists had predicted yesterday that Omicron would be able to surpass Delta in mid-January.
Dominic Raab echoed No10’s official stance in Cabinet meeting. He claimed that ministers did not want to introduce tougher Christmas curbs in spite of Omicron’s dramatic rise. He stated that he did not believe Plan B was necessary, as he said to BBC Radio 4’s Today program. ‘Why? The success of our vaccine programme.
The Prime Minister updated his Cabinet this morning on the current situation. He acknowledged that it wasn’t too soon to know if super-mutant strain is worse, but said there were ‘early indicators’ in that direction.
On average, 46,000 Covid patients are diagnosed each day in the UK. Covid Genomics UK Consortium data (COG UK) shows that around 1 in 666 cases, or 1.4%, is affected by the new strain.
This image has caused fear in scientists and prompted ministers at the UK to accelerate the rollout of booster vaccines. In England, mask mandates have returned. The graphic details Omicron’s super-mutant Omicron variant and its spike protein mutations, which experts believe will make it more infectious and resistant to vaccines. This graphic was released by the nation’s leading variant monitoring team. It also shows how the strain is more advanced than the Delta strain. There are nearly five times the number of modifications to the spike.
Scientists believe booster jabs will provide high protection against Omicron-related severe illness or death, even though vaccines are less effective in preventing it.
No10 last week announced that the booster program will be increased to 500,000 jabs daily and that it will offer an additional dose of vaccine to every 53 million British adult by January. This is to protect against any incoming waves.
The scheme is already in a bind with only 290,000. On average, only 378,000 people are administered daily.
Later, Johnson said that now was the right time for people to have a booster shot.
He stated that the booster program is Europe’s fastest; he believes we’ve done more boosters in Europe than any other comparable country. However, it could still go much faster.
He continued, “I would definitely say to people that this is the time to obtain it, and, of course from Monday, will we be contracting out the interval so that you reduce to three months, and that will result in a large uptake in the program as well.”
Omicron could trigger an epidemic of hospital admissions similar to the January 2021 peak, according to scientists.
It appears that the virus can infect ex-Covid patients easily and UK Government experts believe it will make vaccines against infection up to 40% weaker.
Omicron could infect more people than it can kill, according to experts.
Asked whether Omicron could infect more people but make fewer people sick, Professor Spector told BBC Breakfast: ‘If early reports pan out – we don’t absolutely know this, we’ve got hardly any data in this country where we have high rates of vaccination – but if we assume that it is not more severe and possibly milder than Delta, but it’s much more transmissible…
It means people who get the vaccine in large numbers will likely pass it on twice as fast than those who have it individually. This is good news for each individual, as we see fewer cases of the disease going to hospitals. Partly this can be attributed to our high vaccine rates.
“But it does mean that you may eventually die from the disease because almost everybody is either re-infected or infected.
“This means it is possible for the entire country to be worse news than for individuals. It’s not a reason to be complacent.
In South Africa, there’s been a dramatic rise in Covid infections in the past fortnight after Omicron was alerted to its existence on November 24th.
Professor Spector of the Covid ZOEsymptom study stated that the UK may have Omicron in less than 10 days. This is contrary to the belief held by some other countries.
He stated that the official estimate is about 350 Omicron case, but because there are not many Omicron cases in the testing, the actual numbers would be between 1,000 and 2,000.
Sajid Javid, Health Secretary (left), warned that the variant was now being spread domestically to multiple areas. The official count currently stands at 437. However, none of the infected have been admitted. Dominic Raab (right), Deputy Prime Minister of Omicron, said today that ministers did not want to introduce tougher Christmas curbs. He also claimed that they were not planning on introducing vaccine passports and working at home. Before the weekly Cabinet meeting, both ministers were pictured in Downing Street.
Boris Johnson was more decisive than Mr Raab (pictured with his two-year old Jack Russell-cross dog Dilyn in Westminster this morning). Yesterday, Johnson refused to exclude tightening holiday restrictions, but merely said that Christmas would be “better” than last year.
South Africa’s case numbers have risen dramatically since Omicron first became known. The country had 358 cases last month, which is compared with the 6,381 today. Although the daily number is lower than Tuesday’s, it is due in part to low weekend testing, which saw only 24,159 people being screened yesterday. The positivity rate — the proportion of all tests conducted that are confirmed Covid cases — rose to a record 26.4 per cent
The virus was found in 175 South Africans, an increase of 121.5 percent on the number of 79 patients admitted last Monday. In a single week, there are 3,517 people in hospitals with the virus. This is an increase of 51.1 percentage. The graph below shows the weekly Covid hospitalizations
‘And we are expecting this to be doubling about every two days at the moment, so if you do your maths – say assumed it’s 1,000 at the moment, and you think it’s going to be doubling every two days, you can see that those numbers are going to be pretty (high) certainly in about 10 days time.’
Dominic Raab (Deputy Prime Minister) ruled out further Christmas restraints as he celebrated the success of Britain’s vaccination program in overcoming the Omicron crisis.
Today interviewed him and said that they were doing everything possible to address the threat. However, we have taken care not to create new risks or challenges.
When asked why Plan B was not being implemented by the government, he replied that he didn’t believe it necessary. Why? It’s because of the effectiveness of the vaccine program. We’ve got 118 million doses dispensed.’
Director of Covid-19, Dr Barrett at the Wellcome Institute said that Omicron still has many unanswered questions that would help determine the need for more curbs.
According to him, the Today program asked: “The critical question is, obviously, how many of these cases, which will probably be a lot, will result in severe disease?”
“And many people, including Dr Fauci, chief medical advisor to the US president), have hypothesized that this variant might be milder or less likely than other variants.
“I think that what we have so far seen in South Africa is compatible with that. However, it is too soon to tell. This variant is capable of infecting people who are either vaccinated, or were previously infected.
“We know that breakthrough or second infections in vaccinated people tend to be milder. Omicron has not been seen in severe cases so far. This could be because Omicron is infecting individuals with some immunity. Although this is good news, it’s too early to conclude that Omicron is milder than Delta.
Doctors in South Africa have insisted that most patients suffer only mild illness, with the US’ top Covid expert Dr Anthony Fauci claiming yesterday it ‘doesn’t look like there’s a great degree of severity to it’.
British scientists have warned, however, against the notion that it’s a weaker strain. They warn that its ability to infect more people could cause significant problems for the NHS.
One mathematical modeller predicted there could be up to 3,000 hospital admissions per day in the UK in January if Omicron takes off domestically — compared to the 4,000 per day at the peak last year.
Dr Barrett reiterated the fact that the strain could be more severe than previously thought, but it could still pose a serious threat to the NHS.
He said, “The problem with this is that, even though it’s only a tiny fraction, that can still lead to problems.”
“It has a series of mutations in it genome that we have seen previously, but others we don’t know about. These make it bind to cells very tight to infect human cells.
“So it probably transmits and has also developed mutations at many positions that are well-known to hold the viruses’ antibodies.
“These have been altered, so it’s very likely that this disease will not be well-neutralized by vaccines.
“Again, that will be determined with laboratory data within a few weeks. However, the rapidity at which it moves through both countries that have been vaccinated and those with high levels of infection, such as South Africa, strongly suggests that it may be able to evade immunity.
He stated that he believes we can now state that the variant of Delta is spreading more rapidly in the UK, than that of the Delta. This was something that I didn’t know until recently. “I am quite certain that it will take over (Delta), probably within a matter of days.
This came after former prime Minister Theresa May lambasted the Government for its Omicron response. May accused ministers, who she claimed put businesses at risk by stopping and starting sections of our economy’, of making it clear that they were not ready to deal with Omicron.
Last night in the Commons, Mrs May stated that Omicron seemed to cause less severe illness than other varieties and that the government should be learning to live with Covid.
An annual vaccine is better than trying to stop the economy from starting, which can lead to jobs being lost and businesses falling apart.