Omicron

As the Omicron variant makes its way through the population of the UK, the Chief Medical Officer’s warning that we don’t know all that much about the variant, but ‘all the things we do know are bad’ was not what anyone wanted to hear this week. Unfortunately, Chris Whitty is right. The Omicron variant’s assault on the UK has been like a blitzkrieg so far, and it has left a trail of shock and confusion in its wake. It is no wonder that Sage have advised this week that more restrictions may now be needed to prevent a rapid rise in hospitalisations. There is still a lot we don’t know about Omicron, but we have been able to build up a partial picture of the variant.

The run up to Christmas is normally a merry time for the hospitality industry. Our nation’s restaurants, pubs and bars are usually bursting at the seams. Most people are out celebrating with their family, friends and colleagues – with crackers being pulled, pigs in blankets served and a glass or two of mulled wine drunk under the mistletoe. Yet, the exact opposite is happening right now for the hospitality industry in the UK. Instead it’s the nightmare before Christmas. Ever since people in Britain have been told to work from home by the government and told to cut back on socialising by chief medical officer Chris Whitty, pubs and restaurants have been clobbered.

Emmanuel Macron subjected France to a two-hour primetime television interview on Wednesday evening which must have been a pre-Christmas treat for the nation. Just under four million tuned in to see Macron discussing his achievements as president in what was a polished performance; not since Tony Blair has a world leader been such a consummate actor as Macron. He declined to confirm that he will be standing for a second term in April's presidential election but his people know that he will. There was one fly in the ointment, however, a buzz which has been distracting Macron for months: Covid. France is only just emerging from a 'fifth wave' of the virus which last month prompted the government to launch its booster campaign and, among other measures, close nightclubs.

What we know from the imperfect data we have is that Omicron is vastly more infectious but less virulent than the Delta variant. If the UK Health Security Agency is right in its modelling estimate that as of last Sunday, there were already 200,000 cases of Omicron in the country, compared to 60,000 confirmed and 40,000 suspected cases, we cannot exclude a mass pandemic of Omicron infections in the new year. At this rate, even a much milder virus would still overwhelm our hospital capacities. A study by Discovery Health, a South African private health insurance administrator, based on 211,000 positive test results, showed that the hospitalisation rate of Omicron is 30 per cent less than the previous variants.

The Omicron variant had not even been named when the government’s reflexes sprung into almost involuntary reaction last month, and it introduced yet more Covid restrictions. The ‘red list’ was immediately revived and South Africa was placed on it. All travellers from there and several other African countries were soon forced into expensive quarantine hotels to live on microwaved mush for ten days. Some European countries even banned flights from southern Africa, while, in turn, Switzerland responded to the first cases of Omicron in Britain by banning unvaccinated Brits from entering the country. Whenever Covid rebounds, the first thing to happen is that international borders are closed.

Sajid Javid ditched vaccine passports when he became Health Secretary but he now has to bring them in again, albeit in an updated form where a lateral flow negative test will also be accepted. But how to get this past the Commons where 65 MPs have now decided to rebel? How to do this now given that the argument - that vaccine passports restrict transmissibility - has now collapsed? The big news is that the AstraZeneca vaccine has ‘zero’ effect on people catching Omicron. The vaccine still offers protection from getting seriously ill, but the premise of vaccine passports – that the double-jabbed are less likely to be infectious than the unjabbed – has just collapsed.

Boris Johnson announced a new raft of coronavirus measures on Saturday, after two cases of the Omicron variant were detected in the UK. Face masks will soon be made mandatory in shops and on public transport and  PCR tests compulsory for those travelling to the UK. These new restrictions were revealed less than half a week after health authorities in South Africa informed the World Health Organisation of the discovery of the new Covid-19 variant, designated B.1.1.529 and now re-named Omicron. First isolated on 9 November, on Saturday two cases of the virus were detected in Britain, in Essex and Nottinghamshire. Is Boris Johnson right to fear this new variant? In South Africa the appearance of the strain coincided with a steep increase in case numbers.

The restoration of an obligation to take a PCR test within two days of return to the UK, and to isolate until receipt of a negative result, is the most important of Boris Johnson's announcements today. In theory it will delay the seeding and spread of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant. But the relatively limited prophylactic measures unveiled alongside this – compulsory mask wearing in shops and on public transport, the obligation for any close contacts of those infected with Omicron to isolate, whether or not they test positive – will only turn out to be adequate if the new variant hasn’t already been seeded here. It is possible that there is more of Omicron in the UK than we know.