British PM and Scientists clash on Christmas liberties, Omicron now surging in UK  

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#UnitedKingdom, December 31, 2021  – UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the face of threats from the omicron variant last week decided not to institute any further restrictions on UK residents for Christmas.

A few days before Christmas Johnson said, “In view of the continuing uncertainty about several things – the severity of Omicron, uncertainty about the hospitalisation rate or the impact of the vaccine rollout or the boosters, we don’t think today that there is enough evidence to justify any tougher measures before Christmas.”

There were celebrations from some but others including scientists had doubts about the lax approach.

Virologist, Professor Lawrence Young spoke to the Guardian newspaper about what the lack of new restrictions might cause. He said, “Waiting for case numbers and hospitalisations to increase is likely to be too late to suppress the spread … A short circuit break now would have prevented more people from getting infected and from having to isolate which is now impacting many essential services.”

Other scientists were also wary of the seeming lack of response, one in particular Trish Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care health services at the University of Oxford warned against the heavy dependence on booster shots to prevent the spread when simple preventive measures were being ignored.

She told The Guardian,“There are strong scientific arguments for people to immediately cease the activities that are known to cause transmission of this exceptionally contagious variant”

Cases in the UK were trending down at the time of the announcement with about 90, 000 cases per day on the 21st and 22nd of December. There has however been a sharp increase with more than 318, 000 cases recorded on the 27th of December. The case numbers fell to about 128, 000 on the 28th but have been trending upwards of 120 since then.

Johnson has not yet revealed whether or not more stringent measures will be implemented in the New Year.