(Bloomberg) — U.K. Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said one-third of new Covid infections in London are now the omicron variant, and cases in the U.K. are doubling every two to three days.
“Very quickly omicron will be the dominant variant,” Zahawi, the U.K.’s vaccine minister until mid-September, told Sky News.
The U.K. on Sunday confirmed 1,239 new omicron cases, almost double the 633 cases reported the day before.
Studies show the omicron variant is resistant to a two-vaccine protocol, and that an additional shot conveys far greater protection. But the U.K.’s booster program is running slower than hoped. About 33% of people in the U.K. have had a booster shot so far.
“We know now from data that was published in the last 48 hours, that two doses of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca are not enough, they only protect to about 30%,” Zahawi said.
“A booster does raise that protection back up to where we were when we got to equilibrium between vaccine efficacy and delta, and we need to get back to that,” he said. “This needs to be a national endeavor.”
Hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units from Covid are still below year-ago levels and far below their peaks from January, before vaccines became widely available. Yet health resources in the U.K. are already stretched, with serious delays being seen to elective surgery and other medical treatment.
The “January 2021 Covid peak was significantly dealt with by delaying elective activity we can no longer afford to delay,” Chris Hopson, chief executive officer of NHS Providers, said in a lengthy Twitter thread.
“Urgent and emergency care [are] now under much greater pressure,” Hopson said. “We need to stop just looking at the Covid-19 caseload.”
The U.K. faces a two-million-plus backlog of cancer patients, a pharmaceutical group said in October, part of an overall logjam of more than five million people waiting for various health services.
(An earlier version was corrected to show that Johnson isn’t expected to make remarks Sunday, according to a government official.)
(Updates with latest case numbers in third paragraph.)
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