Omicron infections hit 200,000 a day as booster effort marred by glitches

Omicron infections in the UK hit an estimated 200,000 yesterday and the super-contagious variant will become the dominant strain of coronavirus in London within days, it has been revealed.

- ANDREW WOODCOCK

But the first day of the government’s drive to deliver booster vaccinations to 20 million people by the end of the month was marred by technological glitches, as queues running into thousands of people wanting to book appointments built up on the NHS website. Some 110,000 appointments were booked by 9am despite the delays. People queued up to six hours for jabs outside vaccination centres.

Meanwhile, a surge of requests for lateral flow tests led to online orders for the home-testing kits being suspended. Health secretary Sajid Javid said that mailing capacity had reached its limit and called in Amazon and other delivery services to assist the Royal Mail. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Javid said experts expect cases of omicron to “dramatically increase” in the coming days and weeks, with hospitalisations and deaths lagging by around two weeks.

The dramatic figures came as the first UK death of a patient infected with the new variant was recorded. With omicron infection numbers believed to double every two or three days, they set the scene – if accurate – for daily infections to reach a record 1 million or more by the start of next week.

Doctors’ leaders called for the return of two-metre social distancing indoors and mandatory masks in pubs and restaurants, warning that the government’s reliance on vaccines will leave millions at risk from a variant against which two jabs appear to offer relatively little shield while a third gives up to 75 per cent protection.