The government will “look at all the data we have available” on Monday before making a decision on post-Christmas coronavirus restrictions in England, a senior government adviser has said.
Dr Jenny Harries said any move on COVID rules next week will not be based on “simply what the epidemiology is saying”, but also “how it’s impacting society”.
“So for example, we have very high rates of individuals off sick – we know that particularly in London, around one in 35 have currently got Omicron,” the head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Now that’s having an impact on the workforce. So these are not simply about hospitalisation rates.”
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She described UKHSA data on reduced chance of hospitalisation from Omicron as a “glimmer of Christmas hope”.
But she warned: “It definitely isn’t yet at the point where we could downgrade that serious threat.”
The most recent data suggests that someone with Omicron is between 31% and 45% less likely to attend A&E and 50% to 70% less likely to be admitted to hospital than an individual with the Delta variant.
Dr Harries cautioned that although there are currently no “significant rises” in intensive care or ventilation beds for COVID patients, “a lot of the people who’ve been infected to date are younger people”.
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Therefore more data on the effects on the elderly would be required to have the fuller picture, she said.
“What we have got now is a really fine balance between something that looks like a lower risk of hospitalisation – which is great news – but equally a highly transmissible variant and one that we know evades some of our immune…
Source : skynews
