Prof Lockdown warns of 5,000 daily deaths...but cases aren’t doubling every 2 days
UP to 5,000 deaths a day could be caused by Omicron this winter, according to the latest doom-laden predictions from ‘Professor Lockdown’.
research by neil Ferguson, the imperial College London expert, wrongly suggested there could be 100,000 Covid infections a day over summer.
the professor’s alarming projections also led to the first UK lockdown last year – and he has now warned Omicron poses a ‘major, imminent threat to public health’. the latest concerning figures may build pressure on the Government to curtail more of people’s freedoms before Christmas.
the researchers modelled daily deaths per million people from Omicron in a country like the UK. the central estimate was that around 75 people per million could die. that suggests there could be around 5,000 daily deaths in early 2022 in the UK.
A separate report from imperial estimates that the risk of being reinfected with Omicron, having already had it once, is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. Professor Ferguson said: ‘this level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.’
He added: ‘[More restrictions] probably will need to be made in the next week or two to have a substantial impact.’
the model found the best-case scenario for deaths is around 3,300 a day. the worst is more than 6,600. the record number of deaths from Covid is 1,820 in January this year, when most people were unvaccinated.
Yesterday there were 111 deaths from Covid within 28 days of testing positive.
Daily cases reached another record high of 93,045 and analysis suggests Omicron is now the dominant variant in england.
Professor Azra Ghani, from imperial, said the potential daily death figures did not factor in behavioural or rule changes for Covid, adding: ‘i think it’s an illustration of the need to act, rather than a prediction.’
Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK Vaccine taskforce, said: ‘there is a huge amount of uncertainty in these modelled estimates.’ He stressed another month of data was needed to be confident about the impact of boosters on Omicron.
THE modelling used to justify Sajid Javid’s claim that there were 200,000 Omicron infections a day has been abandoned by health officials.
The UK Health Security Agency had assumed infections were doubling every 1.9 days but it now says this has become ‘less valid’ due to ‘behaviour change’.
As a result it will no longer use this method to estimate infection, it said in a document quietly published online on Thursday.
A spokesman said the figure had given a ‘useful snapshot’ to ‘emphasise the scale’ at which Omicron was spreading.
But increased mask-wearing and working from home had reduced the rate of spread and altered the forecast, the spokesman added.
It came as figures revealed that fewer people have died or been hospitalised with Omicron in South Africa than in earlier Covid waves.
Vaccines and prior infections have dramatically reduced fatalities by two-thirds, compared with previous waves.
And more than nine in ten Covid patients who have died in hospital since mid-November were not fully vaccinated, South African scientists added.
Joe Phaahla, the country’s health minister, said the new variant was causing ‘mild illness’.
In the second week of the third wave, which was fuelled by the Delta variant, there were 4,500 cases and 900 hospitalisations each day. But while daily cases rocketed to about 20,000 at the same point in the current wave, hospital admissions were lower at just 350, he said.
In the UK, the NHS continues to refuse to give any details of the only British person to have died with the Omicron variant. There is no information on how old the person was, and whether they had been vaccinated or had any underlying health conditions.