Has Omicron peaked in London? Hospital admissions FALL in the capital for first time since new strain took hold while UK's Covid cases rise by another 45% to 157,758 with deaths down 70% to 42 in a week
The UK's Covid-19 infections have increased by 44.6 per cent in a week as Boris Johnson today suggested NHS staff could be moved to plug shortages amid fears about the Omicron wave triggering a lockdown by default.
Department of Health bosses reported a further 157,758 cases today, a rise from the 109,077 cases which were reported in the country last Monday.
The number of people dying with the virus saw a 70.6 per cent decrease, with 42 deaths reported in the UK today compared to 143 on December 27.
This is the thirteenth day in a row that cases have been above the 100,000 mark as the country moves out of the festive season and comes just days after the week-on-week increase was as high as 72.5 per cent on December 29.
Meanwhile the number of people being admitted to hospital in London has fallen, with 314 patients admitted to hospital on January 1, a 28 per cent decrease from the 437 admitted last Monday.
Today Professor in Medicine Paul Hunter said the latest data from the ZOE Covid study app suggested that infections in London peaked just before Christmas.
He wrote on Twitter: 'Latest Zoe app data suggests that infections in London did peak a day or so before Christmas and are probably peaking nationally about now, though still region to region variation.'
And scientist Tim Spector, who works for the PREDICT studies and the ZOE Covid study app, tweeted: 'Covid cases in London now decreasing + UK slowing - it is great to see no real change in Covid deaths over last month.
'The health crisis is in danger of being driven by staff problems due to over- cautious isolation rules. Lets reduce this to 5 days!'
It comes as the PM today revealed that the government is looking at redeploying personnel after the public sector was warned to brace for a worst-case scenario of a quarter of staff - around 1.4million people - being off work.
One in ten NHS employees were not in on New Year's Eve, according to official figures - although just 50,000 of the 110,000 total was related to coronavirus.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has declared a 'critical incident' linked to 'extreme and unprecedented' staff shortages.
Nearly a third of rail services have been axed at some stations in recent days, after as many as one in ten staff called in sick with illnesses including Covid - while major engineering works on key commuter routes are scheduled to continue until midway through next week.
Councils across the UK are having to redistribute staff between essential services to keep everything running.
Schools are being urged to make contingency plans to deal with staff absences when they return from the Christmas holidays this week.
On a visit to a vaccination centre in Stoke Mandeville today, Mr Johnson urged people to 'stick to Plan B' and Omicron is 'plainly milder'.
He cautioned that it would be 'folly' to assume the pandemic is over the health service will be under 'considerable pressure' for weeks to come, saying the government is 'looking at what we can do to move people into those areas that are particularly badly affected'.
But he batted away calls for the self-isolation period to be cut to five days - saying that could make staff shortages worse by fuelling spread.
'I think the way forward for the country as a whole is to continue with the path that we're on. We'll will keep everything under review,' the PM said.
'The mixture of things that we're doing at the moment is, I think, the right one.
'So, number one, continue with Plan B, make sure that people take it seriously, do what we can to stop the spread, use the Plan B measures, work from home if you can, wear a mask on public transport… take a test before going out to meet people you don't normally meet, think about the the requirements under Plan B, but also get the boost.'
He said: 'I think we've got to recognise that the pressure on our NHS, on our hospitals, is going to be considerable in the course the next couple of weeks, and maybe more.'
Earlier, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi insisted the 'pattern' of the mutant strain was not the same as Delta - with fewer patients needing a ventilator and generally staying in hospital for a shorter time.
In a round of interviews, he highlighted the 'really good' signs on infection rates coming out of London, and stressed that the health service is experienced at moving staff around to deal with shortages.
The UK recorded 137,583 new Covid infections yesterday, a week-on-week increase of 14.7 per cent - a slower rate of growth than preceding days, but not including an update from Scotland.
In contrast to the mood music south of the border, Scots have been warned that April could be 'too early' to be planning large parties in a sign that Nicola Sturgeon's tougher Covid rules could be extended for months.
Ministers will review the restrictions in England on Wednesday, with mounting confidence that there will not be an additional tightening.
The latest figures suggest growth in Covid hospitalisations in London - seen as a leading indicator of what may happen in the rest of the country - slowed in the run-up to New Year, although holiday reporting glitches could be affecting the total.
There were 319 patients admitted to hospital in London on December 31, a 14 per cent rise on the same day a week before, and 450 on 30 December which is a 15 per cent rise week-on-week.
While a holiday effect may be artificially keeping those numbers low, the rate of increase is well behind the days before that saw a 32 per cent increase on December 29 to 511 admissions.
In other Covid developments:
- Daily reported coronavirus cases in Scotland have reached the highest on record at 20,217;
- More than a quarter of a million people got a booster or third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine over New Year's Eve and the weekend, figures from NHS England show;
- Bin collections have been cancelled in areas including Manchester, Essex and Somerset due to staff shortages;
- The number of NHS workers staying at home for Covid reasons has doubled in recent days, figures showed;
- Local council officials said they were having to redeploy staff between services to keep everything runninng;
- In a brighter sign, the Fuller's pub group said absence rates were improving in London and now appeared to be past their peak;
- Mr Zahawi said entire classes may need to be merged into larger groups or sent home to work remotely due to teacher absences caused by coronavirus
- Fewer Covid patients in hospital are relying on ventilation compared to previous peaks during the pandemic, it has been revealed.
Boris Johnson visited a vaccination hub at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Aylesbury today
LONDON: Cases in the capital have been plateauing recently although holiday reporting glitched could be to blame. The grey bars are incomplete data and will rise
In a round of interviews this morning, Nadhim Zahawi highlighted the 'really good' signs coming out of London where infection rates seem to be 'plateauing'
Images show very few motorists along the M1 and A41 today following the New Years holiday period
Ministers will review the restrictions in England on Wednesday, with mounting confidence that there will not be an additional tightening.
The latest figures suggest growth in Covid hospitalisations in London - seen as a leading indicator of what may happen in the rest of the country - slowed in the run-up to New Year, although holiday reporting glitches could be affecting the total.
There were 319 patients admitted to hospital in London on December 31, a 14 per cent rise on the same day a week before, and 450 on 30 December which is a 15 per cent rise week-on-week.
While a holiday effect may be artificially keeping those numbers low, the rate of increase is well behind the days before that saw a 32 per cent increase on December 29 to 511 admissions.
Mr Zahawi told BBC Breakfast that Plan B measures would be reviewed on Wednesday, but added: 'There's nothing in the data that gives me any concern that we need to go beyond where we are at.
'There's some really good data from London that it looks like the infection rates are plateauing, if not yet coming down. But we are seeing leakage into the over-50s in terms of infections, and it's generally the over-50s who end up with severe infection and hospitalisation.'
The minister said on Sky News: 'The number of people in hospital with coronavirus has begun to rise in the over 50s, which we are concerned about. But on the whole actually the number of people in ICU has come down, which is good news...
'On the whole we are not seeing the same pattern as with Delta where we had a much greater number of people on ventilation and there seems to be a shorter period of time for people in ICU as well.
'And those who are being admitted with Covid, rather than for Covid, is also about a third of that number.'
Mr Zahawi said the health service has 'infrastructure' to deploy staff to fill gaps in provision. 'The NHS is very good at being able to move staff around within the system,' he said. 'They have an infrastructure to do that. We now have 10,000 more nurses and 3,000 more doctors than we had last year working in the NHS.
'But the NHS is very good at sort of making sure that staff shortages are monitored and dealt with pretty well. They've done it over many years in winter when we've been, you know, have big flu viruses around.'
But Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said it currently faces a 'state of crisis'.
'In many parts of the health service, we are currently in a state of crisis. In the face of high levels of demand and staff absence some hospitals are having to declare a 'critical incident',' he said.
'Some hospitals are making urgent calls to exhausted staff to give up rest days and leave to enable them to sustain core services. Many more hospitals are having to ban visitors to try to reduce the spread of infection. NHS England is continuing to plan for surge capacity.
'Community and social care services, which were already massively overstretched, are at breaking point. In many areas, ambulance services are unable to meet their target response times. Primary care is having to add caring for Covid-19 patients and trying to keep them out of hospitals to driving the booster programme and dealing with unprecedented underlying demand which is driven in part by the millions of unwell people waiting for appointments and operations.'
As public services struggle to cope, councils in Manchester, Essex, Somerset and Buckinghamshire this weekend announced reduced services or a complete suspension of waste collections as staff numbers were slashed due to positive Covid tests and isolation.
Chelmsford City Council have cancelled three days' worth of food waste collections after 23 members of staff called in sick or unable to work, while 1,000 recycling bins were not collected in North Somerset.
Despite ministers holding the line in England, Scotland's national clinical director has delivered another hammer blow to the hospitality industry by hinting that the ban on large public gatherings amid high Covid cases could last well into the spring.
Pub, restaurant and nightclub bosses believe firms in Edinburgh missed out on around £20million on Hogmanay due to coronavirus measures.
But Professor Jason Leitch played down calls for the famous New Year street party to be rescheduled to April, saying it could be too soon for mass events.
His comments come as hospitality firms continue to struggle under Ms Sturgeon's restrictions, which mean pubs and restaurants must have table service only and one metre social distancing between groups.
Nightclubs were closed on December 27 for at least three weeks, and officials have been warned that some hospitality businesses currently closed will never reopen.
A further 137,583 Covid cases were reported yesterday, while figures on New Year's Day showed a 33.4 per cent week-on-week increase in new cases.
It was the twelfth day in a row that cases have been above the 100,000 mark as the country moves out of the festive season. The week-on-week increase in new cases has been as high as 72.5 per cent, but the figures have been warped by lags over the festive season.
Covid figures for Scotland were not available yesterday, and hospitalisations are not updated on Sundays.
It comes as official figures revealed nearly one in 10 NHS workers were off sick over New Year's Eve as coronavirus continued to hit the health service.
Meanwhile, secondary school pupils will be told to wear face masks from the moment they arrive until they leave when they return to classrooms this week.
In an effort to protect the education of millions of youngsters amid a sharp rise in cases of the Omicron variant, Ministers have requested that pupils cover their faces all day – including while they are being taught. They are already asked to wear masks in communal areas.
Mr Johnson admitted he does not like the idea of schoolchildren having to wear face coverings, but said there was scientific evidence they cut transmission rates.
He added: 'There's an increasing body of scientific support for the idea that face masks can contain transmission.
'We don't want to keep them. I don't like the idea of having face masks in (the) classroom any more than anybody else does, but we won't keep them on a day more than is necessary.'
Schools have raised concerns that plans for more testing and masks will be 'challenging' and could inadvertently trigger the return of online learning.
The Department for Education says head teachers have access to their own supply of coronavirus swabs to meet demand.
This is despite there being a nationwide test shortages - with ministers saying a stash has already been sent to each school. They will be swabbed on site on the first day, then pupils will be expected to take lateral flow tests themselves at home twice a week as well.
Pub, restaurant and nightclub bosses believe firms in Edinburgh missed out on around £20 million on Hogmanay due to coronavirus measures. But national clinical director Jason Leitch (L) dismissed calls for the famous New Year street party to be rescheduled to April, meaning restrictions brought in by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (R) are likely to last until spring.
The news on masks was met with concern from Robert Halfon, the Tory chair of the Commons education select committee, who said he feared the move could damage children's mental health.
But Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said he would rather have face coverings worn in classrooms than children stuck at home.
MPs are due to return to the Commons on Wednesday following the Christmas recess. The Government is set to review its Plan B measures on the same date.
The regulations are not due to expire until January 26, but Downing Street said at the point they were announced in December that a review would take place three weeks after implementation.
The likelihood of Scots facing an extended 'fun-ban' increased when Professor Leitch, said that a planned rescheduling of Edinburgh's Hogmanay New Year's party to April 'might be slightly too early'.
He said: 'I like an Edinburgh night-out like any other person. Whether we can bring that forward to April, the jury is still out.
'We are hopeful. We have now got data from South Africa, from University College London, from Denmark and, crucially, Edinburgh that suggests serious disease is certainly less with this variant, maybe as much as three-quarters less. But let's put that in perspective – 2,500 Delta cases [per day] gets you 50 people in hospital.
'You need 10,000 Omicron cases for the same number of admissions and Scotland is at 15,000. Omicron is encouraging compared to Delta, but Delta was a very low bar.'
Gavin Stevenson, vice-chairman of the Night Time Industries Association in Scotland, claimed there had been an 80 per cent drop in footfall on Hogmanay, which may have cost the sector £20million.
He told the Sunday Mail: 'Hogmanay has been pretty disastrous for the licensed trade. I would estimate that the hospitality sector has lost tens of millions of pounds on Hogmanay night alone.
'It could be a final nail in the coffin for small businesses.'
It comes after a horde of police officers descended on a Glaswegian pub on New Year's Eve to break up a socially-distanced gathering after they reportedly saw 'dancing'.
Onlookers booed and shouted 'shame' as around 25 officers stormed the Avant Garde gastropub in Glasgow and arrested two revellers during the raid on the venue which was hosting a socially-distanced and ticketed New Year's Eve party.
Bar owner Billy Tetmichalis, 63, who plans to make a formal complaint against the police, says he was told he had to close because customers were not following Covid regulations.
However, Police Scotland said the visit was part of a 'routine visit' and not to enforce Covid restrictions
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