In United Kingdom: Omicron’s progression is “amazing, never observed so far”

According to the sanitary safety agency, contaminations would reach 300,000 to 400,000 cases a day. France hardens the conditions of entry from the country.

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“dazzling”, “phenomenal” or “amazing”: the scientific advisers of the British government do not have enough words to qualify the Omicron wave that falls on the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself described it as “Raz-de-traise”. “This variant is the greatest threat to which we have faced since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Jenny Harries, the Director-General of the British Sanitary Safety Agency, Wednesday, December 15, before a Westminster Parliamentary Committee. For this doctor, a specialist in public health, the progression of this variant of SARS-COV-2 identified for the first time in South Africa is “amazing, still never observed so far”.

In order to limit this spread in France, the spokesperson of the Government, Gabriel Attal, announced on Thursday a tightening of the conditions of access in France from the United Kingdom, the travel being “limited to the national residents French and to their families “, and the validity period of the shortened tests.

The numbers give the Tournis. Wednesday, 78,610 new infections have been counted on the last twenty-four hours, a record since the beginning of the epidemic in the United Kingdom. In London, which is again the epicenter, almost 20,000 cases were recorded over this period, and Omicron took precedence over the delta variant. According to the models of the Health Safety Agency, OMICRON infections would gallow the pace of 200,000 contaminated persons per day at the beginning of the week, to reach between 300,000 and 400,000 cases a day in the middle of the week. At this rate, 4 million British will have been contaminated by Omicron before Christmas. “The case of Omicron now doubles every 1.9 day,” said M me harries, and this growth is exponential throughout the country. “We are going to beat a lot of records from here Christmas,” said Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer of the British Government, Wednesday, at a press conference convened urgently by Boris Johnson.

Hospital in difficulty

Should we give in to panic? Is Omicron as virulent as Delta, or does it not in most cases, as moderate forms of the disease, such as southern African experiences have suggested it in recent days? It is too early to pronounce, warned Mr. Whitty, knowing that there is a need for the contaminations to hospitalization and death (165 deaths were recorded on twenty-four hours on Wednesday, and 774 People were admitted to the hospital on December 11, according to the most recent official data). But Mr. Whitty, who has established himself as one of the most respected experts in the country, warned against a “overinterpretation” of South African data. In South Africa, “the level of immunity [acquired by the population] following a wave of more recent delta variant and a less vaccinated population, is much higher than the immunity acquired during the previous Wave [having touched the country], the lower hospitalization rate [that during the previous wave] is not a surprise, “he explained. And to conclude that it is “always possible that odr is less virulent, but people should not think that there is nothing to fear”.

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/Media reports.