Downing Street dusts off Plan B
The rule-givers have looked around No 10 for the biggest dead cat they can find. Emily Hohler reports
The question everyone is asking is whether Omicron will ruin Christmas, says Paul Nuki in The Daily Telegraph. At the time of writing, Boris Johnson was set to announce the implementation of Plan B, which would include vaccine passports for large venues and an order to work from home. Johnson’s decision reflects rising concern at the “rapid spread” of Omicron, but it has been described as a “dead cat” move by a government official, who said Johnson wanted to distract attention from the furore over a “leaked video of a mock Downing Street press conference” (pictured) showing staff laughing about an alleged Christmas party at No 10 on 18 December 2020, in breach of Covid-19 rules.
Johnson has insisted that no such party took place, but unfortunately, such is his record,“denials” have “diminishing credibility”, says Rowena Mason in
The Guardian. It has since emerged that Gavin Williamson also held a Christmas party last December, adds Payne. “A spokeswoman for the education department confirmed a ‘gathering’ had taken place and apologised.”
A Tory MP has said that, in the light of the above, the government will find it “almost impossible” to introduce
“very proscriptive” rules this Christmas. Nonetheless, concerns over Omicron are real. Britain has the highest confirmed number of infections in Europe at 440, says Ben Riley-Smith in The Daily Telegraph. The question is how much of a threat it poses. Norway, which has the biggest single Omicron outbreak outside South Africa, said on Tuesday that “only mild symptoms had been seen”. Vladimir Putin has likened the variant to a “live vaccine”. This response isn’t typical, says Alberto Mingardi on Econlib. Ursula van der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has urged governments to consider compulsory vaccination, Germany has talked of a “lockdown of the unvaccinated” and Portugal, where 87% of the population is double-jabbed, has tightened the rules.
NHS continues to run hot
Evidence suggests that Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, and that it is able to evade immunity far better than other variants, say Jason Gale and Naomi Kresge in Bloomberg. Research from South Africa, Germany and Sweden finds that it can evade vaccines, but not completely. In the South African study of blood plasma from 12 participants who had received two Pfizer shots, there was a 41-fold drop in levels of virus-blocking antibodies compared with the initial strain. However, this is not the full story. Alex Sigal, who presented the findings of the South African study, said, “A good booster probably would decrease your chance of infection, especially infection leading to more severe disease” (boosterjab bookings are now open for over 40s in England). Secondly, as Dr Muge Cevik, infectious diseases expert at the University of St Andrews, points out, lab tests are “far from conclusive”, says Paul Nuki. Omicron may evade antibodies in test tubes, but T-cells also play a part in human immunity.
The main concern, as ever, is NHS capacity. Admissions are flatlining, but
“the system continues to run hot”. Omicron has led to severe illness and death so case numbers matter. As epidemiologist Adam Kucharski puts it, a variant that’s 50% more transmissible would in general be a much bigger problem than a variant that’s 50% more deadly. Citing unpublished official data, Professor Alastair Grant of the University of East Anglia tweeted that Omicron is making up 2% of PCR swabs in England. “This gives a worst-case scenario of about 2,500 cases so far and an R-value of 3.47.” This corresponds to a doubling of around three days, which means that by Christmas we could hit 160,000 cases.