Prof John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a member of the government's Sage advisory committee said plan B measures announced by Boris Johnson were absolutely not an overreaction even if Omicron turned out to be milder than the current dominant variant.
Edmunds told a Royal Society webinar yesterday that it was extremely likely” there were many more cases of Omicron in the community than those confirmed by testing, with those numbers set to soar in the weeks ahead.
The UK Health Security Agency identified a further 249 Omicron cases yesterday, nearly twice the number announced the day before, bringing the UK total to 817. Edmunds said that if the UK had 1,000 cases today, then a doubling time of two to three days would drive the number up to 8,000 in a week and 64,000 in two weeks. These would add to the continuing wave of Delta infections.
This story is from the December 10, 2021 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the December 10, 2021 edition of The Guardian.
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