Another 131 cases of Omicron Covid variant identified in UK
It takes the total to 568.
More than 100 new cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the UK.
The UK Health Security Agency said it had identified 131 infections of the new strain on Wednesday.
That takes the country’s official total to 568 – but experts believe the true figure is likely to be far higher.
It comes as the Government is said to be considering introducing ‘Plan B’ in an effort to reduce the spread of the variant, which experts widely believe is more infectious.
Scientists also fear the strain could make vaccines less effective – but it is thought that jabs will offer protection against severe illness and death.
Yesterday 101 cases were confirmed – suggesting another day-on-day increase of roughly 30%, which does not bode well for the coming winter.
The doubling rate for the virus is roughly every three days, meaning it is likely to overtake Delta as the dominant strain.
A leading scientist has said that means another lockdown cannot be ruled out.
115 of Wednesday’s cases were reported in England, taking the total there to 448, while nine additional infections were found in Scotland were 108 people have been confirmed to have the strain.
Four were found in Wales, taking the total there to nine and earlier the first three cases were identified in Northern Ireland.
Professor Neil Ferguson, who has been a leading expert on virus since the crisis began, said on Wednesday: ‘Certainly case numbers of Omicron are doubling at least every three days, maybe even every two days at the moment, so it’s accelerating very fast and put that in context, it’s the same if not faster than we saw with the original strain of the virus in March of last year.
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‘So it is a concern.’
He added: ‘It’s likely to overtake Delta before Christmas at this rate, precisely when is hard to say.
‘We’ll start seeing an impact on overall case numbers – it’s still probably only 2%, 3% of all cases so it’s kind of swamped, but within a week or two, we’ll start seeing overall case numbers accelerate quite markedly as well.’
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