OMICRON’S R rate could be as high as five and the current wave is set to peak fast, experts have said today.
England’s top doctor warned that “everybody can see this is moving very fast”, but that infection will fall faster than previous waves.
Professor Chris Whitty said Omicron is “highly transmissible and the rates are going to continue to go up”.
He told the Commons Health and Social Care Committee: “I think what we will see with this – and I think we are seeingre it in South Africa – is that the upswing will be incredibly fast, even if people are taking more cautious actions, as they are.
“That will help slow it down, but it’s still going to be very fast.
“It’ll probably therefore peak really quite fast. My anticipation is it may then come down faster than previous peaks but I wouldn’t want to say that for sure.
“I’m just saying that that is a possibility.”
Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser of the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), was asked what the R rate is in the UK.
She told MPs: “The overall R value that was reported on the dashboard last week is between 1 and 1.2.
“But it should be noted there are two current variants circulating. One is Delta which is remaining relatively stable in numbers, and the other Omicron which is increasing very rapidly.
“And with a doubling of every two days, the R value of Omicron is estimated to be much higher – very broad brush estimates of between 3 and 5 at the moment.”
The R value represents how many people one infected person passes the virus to.
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If Omicron’s R value is 5, it would mean 10 people infected with it would lead to 50 more cases.
The R value needs to stay below 1 in order for the outbreak to shrink.
Prof Whitty repeated the message he gave at last night’s No10 briefing that people should prioritise what social events they attend to avoid ruining their own Christmas.
He said it was “sensible” to cut down on interactions which are “less important”.
He told MPs: “What I’m advising people to do is to prioritise, if the most important thing to them in the next 10 days is to go to a football match, that’s the priority for them.
“What I’m saying is that anybody who has something that really matters to them, concentrate on that thing, and then build out from there, rather than just accepting every invitation and going to every bit of work in person.”
Omicron is moving so fast that confirmed numbers are being reported with a lag, and likely do not represent the true scale of the problem.
There have been 10,000 confirmed cases of Omicron so far, based on genetic testing.
A further 15,000 or so have been spotted through testing surveillance, while there are likely thousands more undetected.
Generally, the number of people being diagnosed with the disease each day is soaring and yesterday’s daily count was the highest ever, at 78,600.
It comes as A Department of Health paper circulated to ministers ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the Executive said that a peak is expected in the middle of January.
The paper stated: “It is likely that a peak in case numbers will occur in the middle third of January, with hospital admissions and occupancy peaking in late January/early February.
“The extent of the hospital peak will depend on the severity of Omicron illness, but without further measures is likely to exceed numbers observed earlier in the epidemic, potentially several fold.”
HOSPITAL PRESSURES
Professor Chris Whitty said the peak of hospital admissions in the UK may be ahead of us.
He said: “The peak of just over 4,500, or 4,583 to be exact, people admitted at the absolute peak – it is possible because it is going to be very concentrated… even if it is milder, because it’s concentrated over a short period of time, you could end up with a higher number than that going into hospital on a single day.
“That is entirely possible. It may be less than that. But I’m just saying that is certainly possible.”
Dr Hopkins said there are 15 people in hospital with the Omicron variant of Covid.
But Prof Whitty said: “But the real number will be much bigger than that. That is simply the number who are proven, just to be clear.”
BOOSTERS CRITICAL
Prof Whitty said studies are showing a “lot of people are getting reinfected with Omicron that previously were vaccinated or had a combination of vaccine and natural infection”.
“So it definitely is likely to bypass some ability to reduce infection,” he warned.
However, he said scientists had the positive view there would be “preserved immunity” from vaccines or prior infection against hospitalisation or death from Omicron.
That’s despite the fact evidence from the UKHSA so far says one or two doses gives barely any protection against symptomatic Omicron infection.
Nevertheless, Prof Whitty said the most critical precaution people could take was to get their booster vaccine.
He said: “It’s likely somebody with one or two vaccines already will have some protection, and with a booster considerably more protection, against hospitalisation and death, even though protection against infection is less good.
“It does look as if they [boosters] restore some of the ability to reduce infection, probably quite a lot actually quite for a period of time.
“So there are multiple reasons to get the booster – it will reduce the risk of serenity, it will reduce the risk of mortality, and it almost certainly will reduce your risk of transmitting and getting symptomatic disease.
“So we really want to push the point that boosters are absolutely critical to this.”
With a huge rush to get top-up doses, The Sun’s Jabs Army is calling on thousands more volunteers to sign up.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote in a piece for our readers: “It’s your chance to be part of a record-breaking, life-saving, Covid-busting effort the likes of which the world has never before witnessed.
“The more volunteers we get, the more people we can protect.”
Source: The Sun