Children are back at school and the risks are greater than ever – the PM must be prepared to act

On New Year’s Eve, one in 10 NHS staff were absent from work. United Lincolnshire Hospital Trusts, one of the country’s largest NHS trusts, has declared a critical incident over “extreme and unprecedented” staff shortages.

On 29 December, there were 209,743 new coronavirus infections in England and Wales alone. Hospitalisation rates are rising – and the government health minister, Ed Argar, has said he expects them to continue to rise for the next two weeks at least.

In Scotland, health ministers have suggested that even April may be too early for large-scale events. In the UK, there is no restriction on them at all.

We have been here before. We have a prime minister that used to act only with extreme reluctance. Now, he can only act with the Labour Party’s assistance, and to do so requires advertising his own lack of political authority over his party.

We are, yet again, in a situation where all we can do is hope for the best, and hope does not tend to fare well in the face of exponential maths. The booster campaign is certainly a success, and is driving down hospitalisations, but it would be more successful if it were accompanied with meaningful restrictions on social mixing while its impact could take better effect. Currently, the government is deliberately choosing to undermine its own best efforts.

Overall rates of vaccination remain too low. This week, children – almost none of whom have adequate protection from the Omicron variant – will return to schools, and will almost certainly bring waves of Covid back into their homes, despite secondary school pupils being asked to wear masks in classrooms again.

Since the start of the pandemic, the phrase “herd immunity” has become common parlance. But even now there is a collective failure to understand that children are part of that herd. Herd immunity will not be achieved without them, and herd immunity achieved via vaccination is significantly preferable to infection.

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Shortly before Christmas, the health secretary Sajid Javid warned it was possible that children with traumatic injuries could arrive at hospital and find no one there to treat them, as staff were all isolating at home.

Encouraging data about the severity of the Omicron variant does not lessen that risk, and it has not gone away. The situation may not become quite that desperate, but it will certainly become desperate, all the same.

Putting children back in class risks increasing the spread of the virus – it is not enough to rule out additional measures. Mr Johnson needs to keep a very close eye on what happens in the next few weeks, and be ready to act immediately if needed. We simply cannot afford to leave it too late.