Coronavirus: 'Wrong time to lift restrictions' says Greenhalgh
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Daily cases of Covid exceeded 100,000 on Thursday and there are no signs the current wave is cresting. The surge in cases is being attributed to the BA.2 Omicron variant – a subvariant of Omicron that is far more transmissible than its predecessor. The emergence of new variants continues to pose a threat to the general public, despite wide vaccination rates.
That’s the chilling assessment put forward by Sir Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer on Thursday.
Professor Whitty warned there is a “high chance” that a new Covid variant which is worse than Omicron will emerge in the next two years.
This makes the next phase of the pandemic fraught with uncertainty, said England’s chief medical officer, hinting at the prospect of future lockdowns if necessary.
Speaking to the Local Government’s Association public health conference, Prof Whitty said there was still a “long way to go” because the virus will continue to “throw surprises”.
He also insisted the virus — which now poses a similar death threat as flu — will be with us “for the rest of our lives”.
The emergence of a more dangerous strain could “significantly change our balance of risk”, Sir Chris added in his speech, which marked the second anniversary of the first coronavirus lockdown.
Sir Chris said the strain could cause “worse problems” than Omicron and the challenges from the current strain are “not by any means trivial”.
Researchers believe one of the main factors behind the current rise in cases and admissions is BA.2, a sublineage of the omicron variant.
The original SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, now known as BA.1, hit the UK hard over winter 2021-22, causing a big wave of infections and putting huge pressure on hospitals.
But in late January 2022 it was noted that a second variation of Omicron, BA.2, was starting to spread around the world.
BA.2 is significantly more transmissible than BA.1, although it is still not clear whether it causes more severe disease.
Speaking to The BMJ, Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in California, said: “I would attribute this to the ‘BA.2 triad.’ The variant has 30 percent more transmissibility than BA.1, but spread has been further enhanced by relaxed mitigation measures and waning of vaccine immunity. It’s all intertwined and clearly going to lead to more widespread surges, including in the US.”
Topol warned that this would now further prolong the pandemic and could even provide “yet another path to a new variant in the months ahead”.
Colin Angus, senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield’s school of health, also identifies BA.2 as the key factor. He told The BMJ: “The recent rise in COVID-19 infections, which is being driven by the emergence of the more transmissible BA.2 variant of omicron, has led to increases in the number of people in hospitals in England with covid-19 in all age groups and across all regions of the country.”
Mr Angus highlighted two factors that he thinks will determine whether the rise in cases and admissions is a “small bump in the road or a full blown second omicron wave”.
The first is how much people have relaxed their behaviour since covid restrictions were removed in the UK at the end of February. The second is the extent to which BA.1 infection provides protection against BA.2.
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