Daily Increase: Over Six-Hundred Omicron Cases Found In UK

Increase in cases comes as scientists advocated for tougher restrictions to prevent Omicron causing anywhere between seventy-five thousand deaths in England over the next five months. 

Over six-hundred Omicron cases have been found in the UK, the biggest daily increase so far for the variant, according to new development. 

The total number of confirmed cases of the Covid variant in the UK is now 1,898. 

The UKHSA said 618 of those cases were in England, 11 in Scotland, two in Wales and another two in Northern Ireland.

On Friday, 448 new cases on the variant were recorded, while overall COVID infections stood at over 58,000. 

Experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who also sit on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) or the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), used experimental data to look at how Omicron may transmit as the country heads into 2022. 

Even under the most optimistic scenario (low immune escape of Omicron from vaccines and high effectiveness of booster jabs), a wave of infection is projected which could lead to a peak of more than 2,000 daily hospital admissions, with 175,000 hospital admissions and 24,700 deaths between December 1 this year and April 30, 2022. 

The most pessimistic scenario looked at by the modellers – high immune escape from vaccines and lower effectiveness of boosters – projects a wave of infection which is likely to lead to a peak in hospital admissions around twice as high as the peak seen in January 2021, if no additional control measures are taken. 

This could cause 492,000 hospital admissions and 74,800 deaths, according to the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. 

Professor Paul Hunter, professor in medicine, University of East Anglia, said any model is “only as good as its assumptions”, adding that one key assumption in this model is that severity of disease outcomes for Omicron is the same as for Delta. 

Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious disease, said Omicron is spreading so fast that people are “very likely” to meet someone infected with the Covid-19 variant unless they are “living the life of a hermit”. 

The University of Edinburgh academic also warned “a lot of people” could still end up in hospital even if the coronavirus mutation proves to provoke milder symptoms than the Delta variant. 

Prof Riley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Omicron is spreading so quickly that, I think, unless you are living the life of a hermit, you are very likely to come across it in the next few weeks. 

“I don’t think anyone should be going around thinking they are not going to catch it, I think that situation has changed.” 

She added: “There is a huge ‘if’ about this, ‘is it milder?’. I think it is very dangerous to compare data from South Africa, say, to the UK.