Despite a record number of COVID cases, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he will not impose new restrictions in England.
Johnson stressed that the safest way to get immune and limit the spread of Omicron is to receive full vaccination.
Omicron now accounts for 90% of all community infections, according to UK health officials.
Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, acknowledged that it is almost too early to determine “whether we’re going to be seeing some sort of plateau and then decline.”
However, he remains cautiously optimistic.
Although the evidence is still out on the older and more vulnerable populations, this particular variant appears to be milder and less virulent.
And so the professor has reason to believe that “there are some green shoots of hope.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of ‘tsunami’ of COVID cases in the near future due to Omicron spread.
The WHO further warned of the risk posed by the Omicron variant after COVID-19 case numbers shot up by 11 percent globally last week.
Omicron is behind the rapid virus spikes, the WHO said in its COVID weekly epidemiological update on Wednesday.
The update came after a number of countries reported record-high infection figures in recent days.
In some parts, the increase has been compounded by the emergence of the new Omicron variant. Omicron was first detected in South Africa.
