Boris Johnson has announced the return of work-from-home guidance from next week, tougher rules on facemasks and the introduction of Covid passports in an attempt to slow the “extraordinary” spread of the Omicron variant.
The prime minister told a Downing Street press conference that Britain must be “humble in the face of the virus” as he announced the series of measures.
He also suggested that the requirement for vaccine passports could be expanded in future, arguing that coronavirus restrictions should not be maintained “because a certain portion aren’t vaccinated”.
• What is plan B and what are the new rules?
He said that Britain needed to have a “national conversation” about mandatory vaccination. “I don’t believe we can keep going indefinitely with non-pharmaceutical interventions — I mean restrictions on people’s way of life — just because a substantial proportion of the population sadly has still not got vaccinated,” he said.
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His decision to activate plan B, part of the government’s winter Covid plan, reflects concern in government about the spread of the new variant, which is believed to be doubling between every two to three days at present.
Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said: “This is an extraordinarily fast rate and we therefore can get from very small numbers to very large numbers really quite quickly.”
From Monday people will be required to work from home, unless going into their office or workplace is a necessary part of their job.
Facemasks will also be required in most public indoor venues, including theatres and cinemas, from this Friday. Covid passports, requiring people to show either proof of vaccination or a negative lateral flow test, will be mandatory from next Wednesday in venues where large crowds gather.
The government will also require all people who have been in contact with someone with the Omicron variant to take daily lateral flow tests.
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In the Commons Sajid Javid, the health secretary, told MPs that the number of Omicron cases could exceed one million by the end of the month on the current trajectory. He said that although there were 568 confirmed cases at present, the estimated current number was “probably closer to 10,000”.
Whitty said that the “incredibly steep” increase in Omicron cases in South Africa, where the variant was first identified, was beginning to “translate into increases in hospitalisations”.
He said there was some data suggesting “around about a 300 per cent increase in hospitalisations over the last week”.
Whitty said: “At the moment the spread is in younger people who you would not expect to go into hospital. It’s once you start moving up the ages and into vulnerable groups that you will start to see that.”
In a cabinet meeting yesterday Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, spoke in favour of vaccine passports. Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, is said to have opposed the idea, which is fiercely resisted by many Tory backbenchers.
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Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College London, said that plan B was needed to slow the spread of the variant, but could not rule out a lockdown. He said the variant was doubling in Britain every two to three days and would make up most cases “before Christmas”.
He told Today on BBC Radio 4 that the peak was likely to come “sometime in January. But I think the key question is whether the country decides to adopt measures to either slow it down or try to stop it and that will critically depend on the threat it poses in terms of hospitalisations.”
He said this was not yet known but argued: “There is a rationale, just epidemiologically, to try and slow this down to buy us more time, principally to get boosters into people’s arm.” He said that plan B “wouldn’t stop it but it could slow it down so it’s doubling, rather than every two or three days, every five or six days. Doesn’t seem like a lot but it actually is potentially a lot in terms of allowing us to characterise this virus better and boost population immunity.”
Asked if lockdown could be ruled out, Ferguson said: “At the moment it’s very difficult to rule anything out. We haven’t really got a good enough handle on this threat.”
A study by Pfizer-BioNTech suggests that three doses of its vaccine offer “significant protection” against the Omicron variant and two doses should still ward off severe disease.
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The announcement came as South African scientists presented preliminary data to their government that showed no clear decline in efficacy of the vaccine’s protection against hospitalisation.
“We haven’t seen any obvious drop-off in terms of protection against severe disease,” Mary-Ann Davies, a professor at the University of Cape Town, said. “We are seeing plenty of cases in fully vaccinated people but almost all of them seem to be very mild.” She cautioned, however, that many cases were in younger people, who are less susceptible to severe disease.
