UK Health Minister does not rule out new limits on COVID before Christmas Reuters

Author: Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s health minister on Sunday refused to rule out further cuts to COVID-19 before Christmas, saying the spread of the Omicron variant was moving very fast.

Britain has denounced the rise in Omicron cases, with government advisers saying it was just the tip of the iceberg. On Saturday, the mayor of London declared a “big event” to deal with the city’s hospitals.

Asked if he could rule out new cuts before Christmas, Health Minister Sajid Javid told BBC Television: “We are assessing the situation, it is going very fast.”

“I don’t think there is any guarantee in this pandemic. At this point, we need to keep reviewing everything.”

Javid said the government was looking at the data “almost every hour” and was listening to its scientific advisers and would balance that with the wider impact of the cuts, such as on business and education.

He said there are many things that are not yet known about Omicron, but waiting for the data to become clearer may leave it too late to react.

Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay held a meeting of the government’s emergency committee on Sunday to discuss the situation with relevant UK administrations and agreed to increase their funding to address Omicron’s expansion.

“They have agreed to continue to monitor emerging data in the coming days, working closely with UK companies and public agencies to understand their impact on industry and services,” said a Cabinet Office spokesperson.

More than 100 Conservative MPs from Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself voted against the government’s latest measures to crack down on COVID-19 earlier this week, and Johnson is facing his prime minister’s biggest crisis after a scandal and a litany of wrongdoing.

Asked if Johnson was too weak to make further cuts, Javid said: “No … if the government felt that more measures needed to be taken, of course we would present that to parliament and be decided by parliament.”

The number of confirmed Omicron cases registered across the country was 37,101 as of 1800 GMT on 18 December, the UK Health Safety Agency said on Sunday, more than 12,000 cases in the previous 24 hours. Twelve people believed to have had the Omicron variant were killed on Friday.

Javid said the actual number of Omicron infections would be much higher.

The total number of new COVID-19 cases reported in official data on Sunday was 82,886, an increase of 51.9% in the seven days to 19 December compared to the previous week.

Javid said the government believed about 60% of the new COVID-19 cases in England were Omicron.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he believed the new cuts were inevitable, otherwise the health service would be on the verge of collapse due to staff shortages and increased pressure from hospitalizations.