Covid

Public health officials in Britain and South Africa were on different planets for about a fortnight. While those in South Africa kept presenting data suggesting that Omicron caused less severe disease than earlier variants, scientists in Britain continued to claim it was too early to say. Scenarios published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) last week pictured a frightening picture of January, suggesting that hospitalisations could peak above previous waves. An assumption was made that Omicron was just as likely to land you in hospital or kill you compared with Delta. As LSHTM admitted, quite a big assumption:- Due to a lack of data, we assume Omicron has the same severity as Delta.

On Monday, Covid restrictions were rejected after the cabinet debated the issue robustly for the first time since the pandemic started. The Prime Minister said he’d revisit the decision, so the debate is very much still ongoing. But it wasn’t just ministers meeting that day. Sage assembled its experts as well, with over 70 scientists and government officials in attendance. The minutes, seen by The Spectator, give an interesting summary of the official case for more lockdown restrictions. Everyone is wrestling with two questions; if there are no more restrictions, how far will Omicron case numbers rise? And how will that translate into hospitalisations? If there is reason to believe that the NHS will be overwhelmed, this makes the case for more restrictions now.

Man makes Covid predictions and God laughs. Yet with the stakes this high in Britain, every bit of real-world data is useful. That’s why South Africa is so important: it’s a country with a well-digitised healthcare sector that we have to thank for sequencing the Omicron variant, and has been first to experience the impact. That’s why its figures, released daily, are being watched so eagerly world over. Right now, there are two questions: is Omicron now falling? And if so, what conclusions can we draw? The epicentre is Gauteng province: home to Johannesburg, Pretoria and about a quarter of South Africans.

If you test positive for Covid now in Britain, the odds are that it’s Omicron: it’s now the dominant strain in England and Scotland. Data released this evening by the UK Health Security Agency showed that by Tuesday, 54 per cent of PCR tests were positive for S-gene target failure (a proxy for Omicron). For perspective, it has only taken eight days for the variant to become dominant: Delta took nearly a month. North of the border, Sturgeon said that the ‘tsunami [of cases] was starting to hit’ and confirmed that in Scotland more than half of cases were Omicron too. Again, that’s using S-gene dropout as a proxy. Some 13,741 Omicron cases have been confirmed in England so far: 696 in Scotland, 313 in Northern Ireland and 159 in Wales.

What was the point of tonight's Covid press conference? Boris Johnson didn't have anything big to announce, other than a very dubious-looking new lectern telling people to 'Get Boosted N0w', with the 0 in the 'now' looking a lot like a Hula Hoop. His purported focus was on the doubling rate of Omicron, and to announce today's record high number of positive tests (78,000). A cynic might argue that calling a press conference on the vaccination programme is distracting from the self-inflicted political mess Boris is currently wallowing through. Given people are already queuing round the block for their booster jabs, it doesn't seem as though the message about Getting Boosted Now really needs a, well, boost.

This evening feels eerily familiar to anyone who remembers the meaningful votes of Theresa May’s premiership. The Tory rebellion on the Covid measures is bigger than expected; the rebels are claiming to be the mainstream of the parliamentary party; the cabinet ministers loyalists to the PM are blaming the whips office; there are mutterings about how long this can go on for. There is, of course, one crucial difference: thanks to Labour, Boris Johnson won tonight’s vote. But it is clear that if he wants to tighten restrictions further, he will be reliant on Starmer’s party’s support in doing so. Relying on the opposition to get their business through is never a comfortable place for a Prime Minister to be.