London: Covid expert says Omicron ‘isn’t spreading as fast as predictions warn’

London: Covid expert says Omicron ‘isn’t spreading as fast as predictions warn’.

A COVID expert in the UK says that the Omicron variant ‘isn’t spreading as fast as predictions warn’, stating that half of the patients in London are being diagnosed with Covid AFTER admission.

Cambridge professor Sir David Spiegelhalter told Channel 4 News: “People are going to be watching London very carefully over the next few days, which has had a huge surge in Omicron, doubling every couple of days.

“But their admissions in London… the speed by which they are going up may be slowing down. It’s not looking quite as bad as it was in terms of the speed of increase.”

He added: “Around half the extra admissions in London with Covid were in fact diagnosed with Covid after they had been in hospital, in other words, they had Covid anyway, which vast numbers of people in London now do, and then they found out they had Covid once they’d gone to hospital.”

On Monday, December 20, the UK’s Department of Health announced that Covid infection figures had risen by 68 per cent in the past seven days and in that 24 hour period, a total of 91,743 cases were reportedly recorded. Three out of the previous four days have seen infections above the 90,000 mark.

Although warning that his government will not be implementing a lockdown before Christmas, UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, did state that he and his team are monitoring cases “hour by hour.”

Speaking in No10 on December 20, the PM said: “We agreed that we should keep the data from now on under constant review, keep following it, hour by hour.

“And unfortunately, I must say to people – we will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public and to protect public health and to protect our NHS.

“And we won’t hesitate to take that action.”

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