Britain is facing a surge in Covid-19 cases as children return to the classroom today and more people go back to working from the office, an immunologist has warned.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, is expecting ‘a rise in infections in the population over the course of the this week.’
A rise in both Covid-19 and flu cases was already observed during Christmas and New Years, and further increases are likely as the weather drops colder, the latest data from the UK Health Security Agency showed.
With NHS strikes still in full swing, Prof Pollard said this will prove ‘quite an extra burden’ on the health system.
He told the Mirror: ‘It is not that we are at a point where there is a terribly serious risk of the pandemic coming back, we just have another virus that is adding to the usual winter pressures.
‘Of course we still have quite a lot of people in hospital from the previous wave. It is not pandemic numbers, but it is quite an extra burden on the NHS.’
Currently, JN.1 – a particularly infectious sub-variant of the Omicron strain – is the dominant one in the UK, accounting for 51.4% of cases.
Referring to he sub-variant specifically, Prof Pollard stressed that there is no firm evidence to suggest that it is more lethal than previous strains.
Rising cases would nevertheless likely add to existing ‘pressures on the NHS’.
He said: ‘I see this as one that is likely to spread extremely well in the population but there is that positive news that it might have been on the way down in the last data.
‘There is no real evidence that it’s much worse than any of the previous variants in terms of hospitalisations and deaths.
‘But because it is spreading more, it is adding to those pressures on the NHS.
‘I do not think we should consider it innocuous, it is a bit of a problem, it is not worse than the last variants we had a few months ago.’
