Omicron Gb variant, first hospital admissions: contagion alarm

Omicron variant covid positive patients admitted to hospital in Great Britain. This was announced by Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of Education, in an interview with Sky News, while alarms arrive in series from the experts: the cases will increase at an exponential rate, the hospital system risks going haywire. “One third of the infections in London are related to the Omicron variant. It is very contagious, cases could double every 2-3 days. Very soon the variant will be dominant, it is a film that we have already seen. I can confirm that there are patients in hospital positive for the Omicron variant. Even if the variant causes less severe symptoms “than Delta,” we risk having one million cases at the end of the month with an exponential growth. And within 3 days it could become 2 million cases. AND even if only 1% of these cases were serious, we would still be talking about thousands of people, a huge number, “Zahawi says. It becomes crucial, he says, to proceed with the vaccination campaign for the third dose. “It is a race between the protection afforded by the booster dose and the Omicron variant. We know that two doses of the vaccine do not offer sufficient protection, we need to vaccinate citizens with the third dose.” Professor Andrew Hayward, Scientific Advisory member Group for Emergencies (Sage), points out that Omicron is “much more contagious, about 2-3 times more than the other variants”. The scientist from University College London predicts “a massive wave of infections, greater than the previous ones. The uncertainty concerns the impact on hospitalizations and deaths. We are talking – he says to the broadcaster LBC – of a hospital system that is already in knee in many respects due to the current level of activities, which are bound to become even more intense and heavier than a normal winter. We face a big problem, how prepared are we to stop this? “To describe a worrying picture is also Professor Susan Hopkins, principal advisor to the UK Health Security Agency. The government, which has just launched new measures with the extension of the obligation to mask, for the expert is faced with “very complicated” decisions. I think we may need to go beyond those restrictions, we must carefully observe what happens with hospitalizations, “he tells the BBC.