Ministers have ruled out any national lockdowns or school closures during the winter admissions crisis. I can’t imagine we’d be as lucky as that ever again.”īut if cases do rise, there is no indication that the UK will return to the mandatory lockdown restrictions in place for much of the Covid pandemic – here’s everything you need to know. He added: “We were incredibly well prepared in that sense. Professor John Edmunds, an infectious diseases expert at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “We were actually very lucky with Omicron because we had just started boosting the elderly and vulnerable.” Some of these will be duplicates, but if the figure is confirmed by Public Health England in its weekly update this would be more than three times last week’s number of 520.Guidance for adults who feel ill to wear face masks in public is not mandatory (Photo: PA)Įarly research suggests it is both more infectious than the current dominant variant – Omicron BA.5 and its sublineages such as BQ.1 as well as being better at evading immunity.īut there is no evidence that XBB.1.5 is more severe than the BA.5 strain, so it should not lead to a higher proportion of infections turning serious.Ī leading health expert told i that the arrival of a variant of concern similar to the Omicron strain which arrived last winter would put the UK under “enormous pressure”. The consortium of scientists tracking new variants, COG-UK, has identified a total of 1,723 cases of B1617.2. There are also clusters in Blackburn and evidence of rising community transmission in parts of London. Public health officials and ministers are stepping up efforts to curb infections of the variant in areas where there have been the greatest increases, including Bolton in Greater Manchester, where secondary school pupils could be told to continue to wear face masks after the policy is dropped for the rest of England from next Monday. The strain, B1617.2, is one of three mutations behind the skyrocketing infections in India. Sage members have been called to an urgent meeting on Thursday to discuss the threat of the Indian variant, cases of which have tripled in a week. “It’s inevitable as we unlock there will be an rise in cases, the key here is have we won the race to vaccinate the most vulnerable members of society so we can keep society open this time.” Indian variant concerns “That third wave we would expect to occur in people that are less susceptible to very severe disease. “Even within Britain there is a likelihood of a third wave in potentially July and August time when we do unlock society,” he said. However, Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told Sky News a third wave would not necessarily mean restrictions would have to be brought back. “So there’s going to be a long rain shadow to Covid.” “These effects could, if we’re not very careful, be lifelong and that’ll be exacerbated by reductions in face-to-face learning in school and indeed in college, further education and universities, which are one of the most powerful engines for reducing deprivation over generations. “Variants are going to cause problems, there will be stockouts of vaccines and no doubt there will be multiple problems at a national level but also at a local level – school outbreaks, prison outbreaks, all those things that people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. He said in March: “There will definitely be another surge at some point whether it’s before winter or next winter, we don’t know. He told BBC Breakfast: “The models that we’ve seen on JCVI clearly point to a summer surge in cases as the lockdown is relaxed, because there are still many people in the adult population who’ve not been immunised.”Ĭhief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has also warned of a third wave. Professor Adam Finn, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), says modelling suggests there will be a “summer surge” in cases. “The aim of doing this is to make sure that it’s irreversible.”Īsked whether local lockdowns could return in areas affected by the Indian variant, Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News this week: “We can’t rule anything out but our plan that has been set out by the Prime Minister and the reason we are being incredibly cautious about exiting lockdown is because we want this to be the last.” What have scientists said? “This is why we’ve chosen to go on this cautious path,” he said. He came under fire last moth for allegedly saying he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than order another lockdown – comments he has denied making.Ĭulture Secretary Oliver Dowden said in March that another lockdown is the “last thing in the world” the Government wants.
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