Perhaps one in ten people in London has been infected

London – and the whole of Great Britain – is experiencing a rapid expansion of the omicron variant. The number of new infections in the UK reached a nationwide record high on Thursday at 120,000.

In London, one in ten people have contracted the coronavirus. The latest daily estimates from the Office for National Statistics’ Office of National Statistics on Christmas Eve showed that about 9.5 per cent of Londoners contracted the virus on Sunday. Estimates for England indicate that the spread of the virus is accelerating. According to this, 1 in 35 people were infected in the seven days from December 13 to 19.

The rapid spread of the Omikron variant has caused the number of new infections with the Covid-19 virus to rise to a new level across Great Britain. On Thursday, the authorities announced that 119,789 new cases were registered within 24 hours. This is again much more than the day before, when the threshold of 100,000 cases was crossed within a day for the first time.

The highly contagious omicron is already prevalent in England and Scotland. A total of just under 91,000 cases of Omicron have been confirmed in the UK, but there are presumably a large number of unreported cases.

It affects 1 in 45 people

Britain’s Statistics Agency, which regularly conducts tests on a representative, randomly selected sample, estimates that in the week to December 16 alone in England, more than 1.2 million people have contracted coronavirus – that’s one in 45 people. This value should be higher this week.

Omikron is already beginning to appear in the health system: sick days for medical staff in connection with Covid-19 have risen by 38 percent on a weekly basis, the Guardian reports, citing figures from the health service. Officials assume that this trend will continue to escalate.

(APA / Reuters / dpa)