Public already have ‘clarity’ on Covid restrictions, Sajid Javid says, as question mark hangs over New Year

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The public already have “clarity” over new Covid restrictions to tackle the omicron variant, the health secretary has said – amid uncertainty over what will happen after Christmas.

Speaking on Thursday morning Sajid Javid said there would be no further announcements on restrictions this side of the holiday – but left the door open to measures going into the New Year.

Mr Javid said government scientists were not yet clear on the extent to which omicron’s less severe disease compared to earlier Covid strains would mitigate against its increased transmissibility.

“We know for example, if a much smaller percentage of people are at the risk of hospitalisation if that is a smaller percentage of a much larger number, there could be still significant hospitalisation,” he told reporters.

The government has been reticent to introduce further restrictions, which have been brought in in some countries on the continent.

Early modelling of the new Omicron variant suggested there could be a huge surge in hospitalisations, but these findings have been tempered by new studies suggesting the disease could be less severe than feared.

The latest data from Imperial College suggests people with Omicron are 15-20 per cent less likely to need hospital treatment compared with the previous Delta variant – and 40-45 per cent less likely to need to stay in hospital for one night or more.

The UK health security agency is expected to release further findings on Thursday regarding the severity of disease caused by Omicron.

Asked when there would be clarity for people’s New Year plans, Mr Javid said: “We do have clarity: the government has taken action already, so-called plan-B, people behaving sensibly and much more cautiously since they’ve learned about this variant.

“And as I said, we’re getting more data all the time, we’re clear that there’s no need for any kind of further restrictions of any type of before Christmas, but of course, we will keep the situation under review.”

He added: “We’re not planning any further announcements this week. Despite the caution that we’re all taking, the sensible caution, people should enjoy their Christmases with their families and friends, of course, remain cautious and we will keep the situation under review. We’re learning more all the time as we have done from this new data and we will keep analysing that data. And if we need to do anything more, we will – but nothing more is going to happen before Christmas.”

On Wednesday the UK reported 13,581 more Omicron cases in the latest 24 hours, taking the total to 74,089. This represents a slight fall on Tuesday, which was 15,363.