An estimated 4.9 million people were estimated to have the coronavirus in the week ended March 26, up from 4.3 million recorded last week, the National Statistics Office said on Friday. The latest explosion is due to the most contagious variant of Omicron, BA.2, which is the dominant variant throughout the United Kingdom Hospital admissions and death rates are rising again, although the number of people dying from COVID-19 is still relatively low compared to earlier this year. However, the latest estimates show that the sharp rise in new infections since the end of February, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted all remaining coronavirus restrictions in England, continued into March. The data came the same day the government ended free COVID-19 rapid tests for most people in England as part of Johnson’s “living with COVID-19” plan. People who do not have health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus now have to pay for tests to find out if they are infected.
“Uncontrolled prevalence”
“The government’s strategy of ‘living with COVID’ to remove mitigation, isolation, free trials and a significant portion of our monitoring is tantamount to ignoring this virus in the future,” said Stephen Griffin, an associate professor of medicine. at the University of Leeds. school. “Such uncontrolled prevalence jeopardizes the protection provided by our vaccines,” he said. “Our vaccines are excellent, but they are not silver bullets and we must not let them carry the weight of COVID in isolation.” More than 67 per cent of people aged 12 and over in the UK have been vaccinated and received a booster dose or a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine. From Saturday, parents can also book a low-dose vaccine for children between the ages of five and 12 in England. James Naismith, a professor of biology at Oxford University, said he believed that in addition to those who are fully protected or not susceptible to the virus, most people in the country are likely to be infected with the BA.2 variant by the summer. “This is literally living with the virus, being infected with it,” he said.
