Worried Whitty tells people to pick the events they attend ‘carefully’

10k

View
comments

Britain today announced its highest ever daily Covid cases number as the Omicron variant engulfs the nation and Boris Johnson and Chris Whitty delivered a stark warning over the need to think twice before attending Christmas parties.

A record 78,610 people tested positive in the past 24 hours, eclipsing the previous record by more than 10,000 — when 68,053 were posted on January 8 at the peak of the second wave. 

Omicron already makes up a third of cases but Government modelling predicts up to 400,000 people are getting the mutant virus every day, with the strain spreading too faster for testing to keep up. Health chiefs have warned there could be a million daily infections by next month, translating into upwards of 4,000 hospital admissions — similar to levels seen during the second wave, but the projections are heavily disputed.

Just minutes after the sharp rise in Covid infections were announced, Professor Whitty told a Downing Street press conference that more records were going to be broken by the ultra-infectious Omicron variant and called for extra caution over reports from South Africa that the strain may be milder. 

He urged people to ‘prioritise’ who they meet in the run up to Christmas, or risk catching the virus and spending the festive period alone. 

Professor Whitty could not be pinned down on whether harsher lockdown curbs were necessary, pointing out that there were still several key unknowns about Omicron — such as how vaccines will perform and how severe it is.

But he added: ‘I think that what most people are doing is, and I would think this seems very sensible, is prioritising the social interactions that really matter to them and, to protect those ones, de-prioritising ones that matter much less to them.’

Asked specifically about work Christmas parties, Professor Whitty said: ‘The risk of someone getting infected at something that doesn’t really matter to them and then not being able to do the things that do matter to them obviously goes up.’ 

The Prime Minister agreed with his chief medical officer, saying people should ‘think carefully’ before going to events over the Christmas period in a dramatic shift in tone. He added: ‘I said many times that I thought that this Christmas will be considerably better than last Christmas, and I stick to that.

‘We’re not cancelling events, we’re not closing hospitality, we’re not cancelling people’s parties or their ability to mix. What we are saying is think carefully before you go.’ 

Grilled about whether Plan B was enough, he added: ‘We think that, given the balance of risks and the balance of continuing uncertainties about Omicron, this is the right approach to take, the right mixture of approaches, to do these two things at once.’

Mr Johnson also hailed the ‘absolutely vital’ booster drive, which saw a record 611,000 top-up jabs dished out in the UK yesterday despite scenes of chaos with hours-long queues and people being turned away at clinics. 

But the language coming from experts advising the Government is much more alarmist. Dr Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency, earlier warned Omicron posed the ‘biggest threat’ of the pandemic so far and could put the NHS in ‘serious peril’. 

Top SAGE modeller Professor Graham Medley admitted he feared the super-strain could trigger a ‘very large’ wave of hospitalisations because it is so transmissible, while vaccine adviser Professor Adam Finn called for action to halt the ‘alarming’ spread of the virus. NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard doubled down on claims that Omicron could cause even more hospitalisations than previous waves.

Daily coronavirus hospital admissions and deaths — both of which are lagging indicators — were up only slightly compared to last week, with 115 deaths (up 2.5 per cent) and 774 admissions (6 per cent). 

The UK Health Security Agency today announced another 4,671 lab-confirmed Omicron cases, bringing the official count to 10,017. This number is much lower than the real toll because only a small number of positive tests are analysed for variants.  

Asked about whether No10’s Plan B goes far enough, Professor Whitty said: ‘I think that what most people are doing is, and I would think this seems very sensible, is prioritising the social interactions that really matter to them and, to protect those ones, de-prioritising ones that matter much less to them.

He said people needed to ‘prioritise what matters’ in the run-up to Christmas and therefore ‘deprioritise other things’, adding: ‘You don’t need a medical degree to realise that is a sensible thing to do with an incredibly infectious virus.’ 

Professor Whitty said he would ‘strongly encourage’ people to take tests before visiting vulnerable people and to meet in areas of good ventilation or outdoors if possible. 

The CMO — a practicing NHS physician — admitted his own Christmas plans with family will be interrupted. 

He said: ‘Realistically, I think there’s a high chance that my original Christmas plans with family are going to be interrupted. I hope it’s not completely but we shall see.’

The country will also likely to lead to lots of people, including healthcare workers, being ill at the same time and forced off work, he warned. He said: ‘We may end up with quite substantial gaps in rotas at short notice.’

‘Given how much difficulty my health and social care colleagues have had over the last two years, saying that is pretty depressing, because they have really, really had to stand up and go back again and again.

‘The reality is this speed of onset is going to lead to lots of people getting ill simultaneously and we have to be realistic about that.’

Professor Whitty also warned against overinterpreting data from South Africa, where daily hospital admissions are running at just 370 per day and data suggests two-thirds fewer patients have severe illness.

He said: ‘The first caution on this is simply a numerical one – if the rate of hospitalisation were to halve but you’re doubling every two days, in two days you’re back to where you were before you actually had the hospitalisation.

‘If the peak of this is twice as great, then halving of the size of the hospitalisation rate, you still end up in the same place. And this peak is going very fast.’

He added: ‘The second point I wanted to make, which I’m not sure it’s fully been absorbed by everybody, is that the amount of immunity in South Africa for this wave – because of a prior Delta wave and vaccination – is far higher than it was for their last wave. And therefore the fact that there is a lower hospitalisation rate is unsurprising.’

Prof Whitty said: ‘That doesn’t mean that there isn’t some degree of slightly milder disease, that is possible. But I just think there’s a danger people have over-interpreted this to say, this is not a problem and what are we worrying about?

‘I want to be clear, I’m afraid this is going to be a problem. Exact proportions of it, of course, South African scientists and UK scientists and scientists globally are trying to determine at the moment.’

Earlier, Dr Harries, chief exec at the UKHSA, warned that Omicron posed ‘probably the most significant threat we have had since the start of the pandemic’.

Despite modelling by her agency being widely disputed among scientists, she told MPs: ‘I am sure for example that the numbers that we see on data over the next few days will be quite staggering compared to the rate of growth that we have seen in cases for previous variants.

‘The real potential risk here and I would underline that because we are still learning a lot about the variant is in relation to its severity, clinical severity, and therefore whether those cases turn into severe disease, hospitalisations and deaths.

‘We are still at too early a stage for that, in fact the world probably is still at too early a stage to be clear.

‘The difficulty is that the growth of this virus has a doubling time, doubling days, at the moment which is shortening, i.e. it is doubling faster, growing faster and in most regions in the UK it is now under two days.

‘When it started we were estimating about four or five. So if you think of that growth rate right across the UK and we are starting to see it and to feel it now in London particularly but yesterday particularly around Manchester and we are very sure there are levels growing across most communities in the UK now, although there is quite a lot of regional variation still.’ 

She made the shocking claim that Omicron was doubling every 1.9 days — much faster than Delta at its peak, which was doubling every seven days.

Dr Harries said: ‘I think we now have so many cases across the community that that is less relevant and as I say in most areas it is now settling to somewhere around 1.9 days.

‘It is difficult to predict where it will go, it is a very unusual variant.’

It came after Professor Medley, who chairs the SPI-M modelling group that feeds into SAGE and has been heavily criticised in the past for over-egging Covid waves, said it was possible the NHS could be overwhelmed next month with the current curbs that are in place. 

Speaking in a personal capacity, Professor Medley told BBC Radio 4 it is ‘very hard to predict in real time exactly what’s happening on any day, but it’s certainly true that the numbers of infections primarily with Omicron is increasing, and has been increasing quite dramatically’.

He added: ‘We’re probably now at the level that we have been at the past, sort of back in January, and it does look as though it’s going to continue beyond that and go over it.’

Professor Medley said there is not currently any good information on the severity of Omicron but added: ‘We are a population in a very different position to this time last year, in the sense that the majority of people have been vaccinated and there has been much infection since then, so there is much more immunity…

‘The fact that we are much more immune than we were generally means that the virus will appear to be much less severe.

‘So, individually, we have a much lower risk but the numbers of infections means that even though individually we’re at less risk, at a population level (the) number of people ending up in hospital could get very large.’

Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), told BBC Breakfast the wave of Omicron is just taking off across the country.

He said: ‘The wave is coming very fast and in fact alarmingly fast – if anything faster than ever. So it really is a race at the moment.

‘The more immunity that we’ve all got the less of a problem this is going to be, but I’m afraid it is going to be a serious problem either way.’

Professor Finn said it is not up to him to say what regulations should be put on the population, but added: ‘I think I can certainly encourage people to do everything they can to minimise spread of the virus during this critical period and, of course, a lot of that can be done voluntarily without anyone imposing rules on people.

‘We all know now what the things are that we can do. We can avoid social contact, we can minimise contact at work, we can wear masks and really importantly, do lateral flow tests and check that you aren’t showing signs of infection on a test before you go into a crowded place where you might infect other people.’

Professor Finn said he is ‘very concerned’ about the current number of daily infections, adding that we are ‘going to see the numbers of people becoming ill and needing hospital care beginning to rise steadily now over the next week and maybe over Christmas as well’. 

But he said boosters take effect in the body quickly, adding: ‘It does come through very fast because you’ve got immunological memory, you’ve seen the antigen before from your previous doses, so the level of protection goes up pretty quick.’ 

Despite pressure from within his own scientific ranks, Mr Johnson is not expected to announce new Covid curbs tonight after he defended the current Plan B restrictions as ‘proportionate’ in the Commons this afternoon at Prime Minister’s Questions.

There are questions about whether the PM would even be able to push through more stringent curbs, given that nearly 100 Tories rebelled against Plan B in a stinging blow to his authority.   

‘I respect and understand the legitimate anxieties that colleagues have about restrictions on …liberties,’ Johnson told parliament during its weekly prime minister’s questions session.

‘But I believe that the approach that we are taking is balanced and proportionate and right for this country,’ he said, adding that he would continue to ‘get on with the job’ when asked if he would resign. 

Ms Sturgeon has said the backbench rebellion by Tory MPs was ‘dangerous’ as it could undermine Boris Johnson’s ability to make tough decisions on the pandemic.

The First Minister questioned whether Mr Johnson had the authority from his own party to pass measures to tackle coronavirus. 

Scotland has had mandatory masks in most indoor settings for months and on Tuesday Ms Sturgeon advised people to limit socialising to just three households.

The Welsh Government has also warned it could announce some further Covid restrictions for the Christmas period due to the spread of the Omicron variant.

There is also growing pressure on Mr Johnson to enforce local lockdown curbs in London, which has quickly become England’s Omicron capital.  

A spokesman for the London mayor suggested yesterday that they would support more restrictions for the capital, saying it is better to ‘act now’. But Tories called on ministers to rely on the ‘vaccine shield’.

Hospitalisations in London have also started to tick upwards, rising 50 per cent in a fortnight. But the raw numbers still stand at around 150 a day, compared to nearly 1,000 during the darkest days of the capital’s second wave in January. Deaths remain flat at around 10 a day.

These are lagging indicators, however, because of the time taken for someone who catches the virus to fall seriously ill and be admitted to hospital, meaning the worst of the rapid spread — which has yet to show any signs of slowing down — won’t be felt until the New Year. 

Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King’s College London who runs the country’s largest Covid symptom study, claimed that hospitalisations in London are now surging at their fastest rate since the end of the first wave of the pandemic.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘If we look at our regional charts, we see London really accelerating more than we have really seen it anytime since the first wave.’

But figures from his own Covid Symptom Study, which has more than a million daily contributors, suggest Covid cases in the capital are not rising faster than last winter when the Alpha variant took hold.

During the first month of the Omicron wave cases in the capital have risen by almost a third, the study says, from 7,626 to 9,856 estimated daily infections.

But during the first month of the Alpha wave last winter Covid infections surged by 71 per cent from 7,694 to 13,228 daily infections. When Delta emerged the app estimates cases also rose by a third from 6,483 to 8,380. 

Separate data from the Department of Health’s Covid dashboard also shows cases in the capital are not rising faster than when Delta or Alpha took hold.

It suggests cases in the capital have doubled since the Omicron wave began, with the seven-day average for cases rising from 3,024 to 6,119.6 daily infections.

But when Alpha took hold it shows infections quadrupled over the same period from 1,985 to 10,725. And when the Delta wave began they rose three-fold from 243 to 954. 

The beginning of the waves was set as the low-point in infections before they spiralled. 

For the ZOE Symptom Study app, this was November 11 for the Omicron wave, June 13 for Delta and December 2 last year for Alpha. And for the Department of Health figures this was November 4 for Omicron, May 14 for Delta and November 23 last year for Alpha. 

Covid infections are rising from a higher base now than when Alpha took hold, which may explain why the new variant is not causing cases to spiral as quickly.

More Britons also have immunity against the virus now than when Delta and Alpha emerged through either vaccination or past infection, which may also be helping to slow the spread of the virus.   

Doctors on the frontlines in South Africa had suggested Omicron was triggering more mild disease among patients.

Official figures from the country showed that although hospitalisations rose at a similar level to when Delta took hold, there were fewer people on ventilators and in the emergency units.

But it is yet to be clear whether the variant is more mild because more people now have immunity against the virus than when Delta took hold. 

South Africa has a lower vaccination rate than the UK with 25 per cent of people double-jabbed, but most have already caught the virus there. Experts warn it is difficult to make comparisons between the two countries because in South Africa most people are young, whereas the UK has a much older population.

Professor Spector said: ‘Omicron is the predominant variant already [in the capital] and will be at 100 per cent very soon, that’s happened in just a matter of days really and that’s why so many people are going down with infections.’

He added: ‘We’re also tracking non-Covid viruses and currently across the country it is about one in four. 

‘[But] in London where Covid is increasing rapidly it is far more likely to be Covid than it is to be a cold.’ 

On Omicron’s symptoms, Professor Spector said: ‘The majority of symptoms are just like a common cold, so we’re talking about headaches, sore throat , runy nose, fatigue, and things like sneezing. 

‘Things like fever and cough and loss of smell are actually now in the minority of symptoms that we’re seeing.’

He said there were ‘no real differences’ between Covid symptoms currently being reported in London now and those from a month ago before Omicron took hold.

Asked whether the virus was triggering more severe disease, he said: ‘We are not seeing any severe disease, we are not seeing any unusual symptoms that people have reported in South Africa.

‘It’s looking very similar, it’s looking very respiratory. It’s looking mild at the moment and it’ll be a while before we know exactly how mild because most of the cases are still in the young.

‘But we are getting breakthrough infections in people who are having two or three vaccinations, and that’s more than we saw before.

‘When we look at regions with high and low Omicron we are seeing more breakthrough infections in London where there is high Omicron.’ 

London could soon face more restrictions, reports suggest, as ministers mull over ‘Plan C’ measures introducing more curbs on people’s daily lives. 

A spokesman for the mayor Sadiq Khan said yesterday: ‘Cases of Omicron are rising sharply in London and with so much at stake, it is better that we act now to safeguard the public and help reduce pressures on NHS services.

‘Londoners will see vaccine centres working around the clock, more local pop-up sites coming online near them, and [the Mayor] will use all of our resources at City Hall to ensure that all of London’s communities are encouraged to take up this lifesaving vaccine.