As soon as it became obvious that plan B was needed, it was equally clear that it would not be enough to stop the spread of Omicron.
With cases of the new variant doubling every two or three days, and an estimated reproduction value higher than three, there is little prospect that vaccine passports and working from home will bring this R number below one and push cases down. But few, now, have the stomach for lockdown-style measures to suppress the variant entirely. Such a strategy has no clear end point other than a rollout of tweaked vaccines, which will take months.
So Boris Johnson is in effect returning to the original March 2020 plan, one he described as “squashing the sombrero”. This means using limited social distancing to avoid a spike of infections above NHS capacity, and trying to space out infections to prevent so many people becoming ill at once that hospitals cannot cope.
This year, delaying infections will also allow more time to give booster vaccines, although the speed at which Omicron is spreading, and the weeks it takes for vaccine protection to kick in, mean this will not have as big an impact as had been hoped.
Delay also buys a little more time to understand how big a threat Omicron is. We still do not know how severe it is, or how well vaccines protect against it. Only as this becomes clear will we be able to judge whether plan B is enough, or if tougher measures are needed.
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One reason for going to plan B now is to maximise the chances that it will be enough. The longer ministers allow Omicron to spread, the harder the measures needed to slow it will be.
If the government does need to go further, the next steps are likely to be daily testing for contacts of Covid cases, or a return to isolating. This would risk a repeat of the summer “pingdemic”, which caused huge disruption for businesses. An extension of Covid certification to hospitality will also be considered.
Taking a test to go to the pub would be hugely disruptive, but it could be enough to prevent a wave of infections.
If it is not, we will be left contemplating draconian restrictions on hospitality. The only step beyond that will be a full lockdown.
