Covid news - live: New ‘highly infectious’ XBB.1.5 subvariant ‘a wake-up’ call for UK

When Connor Buss stopped going into school during the Covid pandemic, his father noticed a change.

James Buss’ 13-year-old son struggles with focus and would often get distracted in class. Learning at home, as most pupils did as the virus spread, offered a way around this.

“His marks improved. He didn’t have any distractions around him,” the 39-year-old, from Cambridgeshire, tells The Independent.

Zoe Tidman reports:

People have been urged to wear face coverings and remain at home if feeling unwell, as an already crisis-stricken NHS faces down multiple waves of winter illnesses.

With children returning to school at a time when high levels of flu, Covid-19 and scarlet fever are all being reported, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued fresh guidance in a bid to minimise the diseases’ spread.

Parents have been urged to keep children at home if they are unwell and have a fever, with adults told to only go out if necessary and wear face coverings if they are ill and avoid visiting vulnerable people.

Andy Gregory reports.

A new Covid-19 subvariant, XBB.1.5, has revived concern about the spread of the virus in the UK this January.

A relative of Omicron, XBB.1.5 was first detected in the state of New York in October 2022 and already accounts for more than 40 per cent of American cases.

The variant has since been detected in the UK and is thought to constitute at least 4 per cent of Covid viruses being sequenced.

Joe Sommerlad reports:

Mike Ryan, the World Health Organisation’s emergencies director, told a media briefing yesterday that current numbers being published from China under-represent hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and deaths.

Earlier WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he understood why many countries have imposed testing restrictions on passengers coming from China given the lack of information from the Chinese government about the outbreak.“

WHO is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses to protect against hospitalisation, severe disease and death,” he said.

Fears have been raised as new offshoots of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant have caused cases to surge in countries around the world.

Omicron relatives XBB and XBB.1.5 have been reported in several nations, including the UK, leading British health officials to urge the take-up of Covid vaccines and other protections against the virus.

On Tuesday, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) advised Britons to stay at home when feeling unwell or wear face coverings when going outside in a bid to stem the risk of a new Covid wave.

Emily Atkinson reports:

New Covid strains are sparking fresh health concerns across the globe as the world welcomes 2023.

Descendants of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant - XBB and XBB.1.5 - have seen a surge in cases in many countries over winter.

But what exactly are they?

Watch here:

Pharmacy leaders have warned about a shortage of cough and cold medicines, with some chemists “struggling to obtain the very basic supplies”.

Throat lozenges, cough mixtures and some painkillers are among the over-the-counter medicines in short supply, according to the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies.

The industry group warned of supply issues of both branded and unbranded medicines to treat seasonal illnesses.

Thomas Kingsley writes:

Minutes after midnight on 1 January 2020, I cheerfully tweeted that the new decade would be the best in human history for travellers. All the evidence pointed that way.

Since the start of the Jumbo Jet age half a century earlier, things had only got better. Horizons had relentlessly widened, costs had fallen steadily in real terms and safety had improved almost immeasurably.

The travel business is ever-optimistic, and I paid little heed to a foreign news story The Independent had broken the previous afternoon, which began: “Health chiefs in China are investigating an outbreak of a respiratory illness.”

Simon Calder writes:

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was concerned by how China was handling the Covid-19 pandemic.

China’s Covid-19 data is not giving an accurate picture of the situation there.

It apparently under represents the number of hospitalisations and deaths from the disease, a senior official at the World Health Organization said earlier in the day.

The UK Health Security Agency’s chief executive Leyla Hannbeck has warned that a lack of government planning has led to pharmacies running out of products.

The CEO said: “For example, with cold and flu, we knew some months ago cases were going up and it was anticipated that there would be higher demand for these products.

“So you would have thought that plans would have been in place in terms of managing this with regards to liaising with manufacturers and getting the products in.

”Not being able to access self-care products in pharmacies is leading to more pressure for the NHS, she added.

“What we are seeing, which is concerning, when people go to pharmacies and try and get hold of the products over the counter, particularly for small children, then people start to stress and panic and what we don’t want to happen is for more people to go to their GP or A&E when the NHS is already under a lot of strain,” Ms Hannbeck added.

“It comes back to a broader issue of our supply chain not functioning properly. “And every time there is demand for something – like with Strep A (which saw a spike in demand for antibiotics) cases were going up in October, and then in early December the government said there were no supply issues – when clearly there were supply issues – and then they had to issue a serious shortage protocol which demonstrates that there actually is a supply issue.

“So it becomes trouble shooting rather than having robust plans to sort problems out.”