When will they give us ALL the Covid facts?

HOW can we possibly assess the true risk of Omicron when we’re fed a constant diet of partial, selective and sometimes downright bogus information?

Yesterday the UK Health Security Agency was forced to admit that a major plank of its opposition to cutting Covid isolation from seven days to five was simply wrong.

It had said that evidence supporting the US decision to shift to five days was irrelevant here, because the isolation period in America began only after a positive Covid test rather than when symptoms are first experienced, as in Britain.

After being corrected by the US Centers for Disease Control, UKHSA was forced to confess its claim was untrue. The rules are in fact the same in both countries.

This was not the first time UKHSA has been caught playing fast and loose with the data. The Office for Statistics Regulation has accused it of inflating the true scale of Omicron.

And there was further controversy yesterday over its assertion that a move to five days would be dangerous because up to 30 per cent of people with Covid could still be infectious after that time.

But this is a crude blanket figure. If agreed, the new minimum period would apply only to those who test negative. Among this group the proportion still being infectious would surely be far lower.

So why won’t they tell us how much lower? More selective use of statistics to justify stricter rules? This calculated lack of candour must end.

Having been among the first to call for the minimum Covid isolation period to be cut from seven days to five, the Mail is relieved to see the Prime Minister and his entire Cabinet finally seeing sense.

With absences across the NHS and in schools soaring, making infected staff stay away for a minimum of seven days – even if they have no symptoms – is becoming impossible to sustain.

Meanwhile, intensive-care bed occupancy is at a five-year low, making it increasingly obvious that Omicron is much weaker than previous variants. Even the normally ultracautious World Health Organisation says ‘the end is in sight’.

So ministers must now disregard the scaremongers, release all relevant data and help Britain learn to live with Covid. Moving to five-day isolation is just the start.