British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday confirmed the UK’s first death from the Omicron variant of coronavirus, the first known fatality from the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19 in the world.
He announced an enhanced Omicron Emergency Boost campaign, which sets an end of the year deadline for all adults aged over 18 to be offered a third top-up dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This brings forward his previous timeline of January 2022 for this target in an effort to build a “wall of vaccine protection” against the new variant.
“I am afraid we are now facing an emergency in our battle with the new variant, Omicron, and we must urgently reinforce our wall of vaccine protection to keep our friends and loved ones safe,” he said.
According to a modelling study Omicron could cause up to 75,000 deaths in UK by April end. It suggests that Omicron variant of coronavirus could cause between 25,000 and 75,000 COVID-19 related if additional control measures were not taken.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study suggests that Omicron has the potential to cause a wave of transmission in England that could lead to higher levels of cases and hospitalisations than those seen during January 2021.
On the other hand, long queues were seen outside walk-in vaccination centres across the UK on Monday as people queued for their booster vaccine doses, even as the government’s work from home guidance came in force as part of measures to tackle the “tidal wave” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
The researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the UK used the latest experimental data on the antibody-evading characteristics of Omicron to explore plausible scenarios for the immune escape of the variant.
Under the most optimistic scenario, a wave of infection is projected which could lead to a peak of over 2,000 daily hospital admissions, with 175,000 hospitalisations and 24,700 deaths between December 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022, if no additional control measures are implemented.
The optimistic scenario assumes a low immune escape of Omicron and high effectiveness of vaccine boosters.