Johnson says no new restrictions needed as top scientist warns people with ‘sniffle’ to stay home
Boris Johnson has today insisted no new restrictions are needed, despite warnings from a top Covid scientist that people with a “sniffle” should work from home.
Johnson this morning said the UK had been “the first country in the world to take decisive measures to tackle Omicron” in the face of criticism that his government had not done enough to counter the new more transmissible strain.
The Prime Minister did not rule out bringing in new measures before Christmas as he said he was “still waiting to see exactly how dangerous it is, what sort of effect it has in terms of deaths and hospitalisations”.
However, he repeated that he was confident “this Christmas [will] be considerably better than last Christmas”.
There are now close to 300 known cases of Omicron in the UK, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
It is now believed that there has been community transmission of the variant, which is thought to be more resistant to vaccines.
The jury is still out on whether the variant is more dangerous than previous iterations.
Some government and private sector scientists have been cautious in their advice, with one member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) warning yesterday that people should limit social contact over the next few weeks.
Professor Tim Spector, a scientist behind the Zoe Covid tracker app, today said people with a “sniffle” should avoid their workplace.
He told Times Radio that “we should really be encouraging people not to come in to the office, not to go to that Christmas party if they’re feeling unwell”.
“Take a test and then, when the symptoms subside, then they can come out — it doesn’t have to be ten days but just those first few days are probably the most crucial,” he said.
“We want to tell people that if you don’t feel well that day, don’t go out, don’t go to work, work from home, because the start of that sniffle, the start of that sore throat, that headache, could be a mild dose of Covid that is just breaking through your vaccine.
“So I think everyone needs to be much more aware of a whole range of symptoms and not wait for the loss of smell or taste which may never come, not wait for fever, not wait for that persistent cough.”