People have been admitted to hospital with the Omicron variant in Britain, a government minister has confirmed, as a senior public health adviser said further curbs may be needed.
The education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said he could confirm there were “cases in hospital with Omicron”. “We’ve been able to test people who are in hospital over the past two weeks, and so there is a lag to hospitalisation,” he told Trevor Phillips on Sky News.
Speaking to the BBC, Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser of the UK Health Security Agency, said hospitals were diagnosing Omicron in an increasing number of people coming into emergency departments and that the numbers in hospital were expected to increase.
No deaths have been reported so far from Omicron, although it is just over two weeks since the variant was first detected in the UK, and there is normally a time lag of three to four weeks between infection and death, should that happen. “I think it’s too early to make any assumption at this point in time,” Hopkins said.
Hopkins said it was “inevitable that we’re going to see a big wave of infections” but that it was not yet clear how many of these cases would be severe.
The reports follow a warning on Saturday from leading scientists that a failure to impose tougher Covid restrictions could lead to a further 25,000 to 75,000 deaths – or 175,000 to 492,000 hospital admissions – over the next five months. The researchers, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, predicted that a massive wave of infections was likely to sweep the nation in January.
A major unknown is the extent to which vaccines will protect against more serious disease.
Hopkins said further restrictions could be needed to protect the NHS but that it would take another two weeks to know whether the UK was heading into a more optimistic scenario in which Omicron causes milder illness, or the more extreme end of projections. “The challenge is there’s a big difference between 2,000 and 10,000 admissions a day,” she said.
Asked whether there were plans to vaccinate children aged five to 11, Zahawi, the former vaccines minister, added: “There is no plan at the moment to vaccinate primary school children for the reason that the Joint Committee on Vaccination [and Immunisation] is still looking at the evidence as to what level of protection it would offer those.” He added: “The most important thing is to boost the most vulnerable – that is absolutely the priority.”
Source: Guardian
