The number of hospital admissions is expected to rise further, with cases being caused by two sub-variants of the Omicron variant, a health chief warned.
Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said it doesn’t look like the current wave has reached its peak, urging people to “go about their normal lives” but in a “precautionary way.” “.
Dame Jenny told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “It doesn’t look like that wave is over so we expect the number of hospital cases to increase. And it is possible, very likely, that they will actually peak over the previous BA.2 wave.
“But I think we won’t know the total impact. It’s easy to say in hindsight, it’s not so easy to look ahead.”
She said most cases in the UK are now BA.4 or BA.5 variants, with the latter “really pushing and driving this current wave”.
Dame Jenny added that people should “go about their normal lives, but with that precaution”, emphasized washing hands, keeping distance where possible and wearing a face covering in enclosed, poorly ventilated areas.
She said she didn’t routinely wear a face mask, but that she routinely wears one and would wear it on the tube and when she was with someone who was “quite concerned” about Covid.
Speaking of masks, she said, “If I have a respiratory infection it’s a good thing to do and I think it’s a new lesson for the country.”
When asked whether it matters that many people become infected with Covid, she said that in addition to the effect on individuals, it also “matters on a national basis”.
“While we now have an armament of vaccines and antiviral treatments, as you have just emphasized, we have an increase in hospitalizations and occupancy,” she said.
“And that means we’re not just concerned about Covid, but our ability to treat other diseases.”
The comments from the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency come days after the latest figures showed the number of Covid-19 infections in the UK had risen by more than half a million in a week.
According to the Zoe Covid study, case levels in the UK are now approaching “record levels” due to the two strains.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 2.3 million people in private households contracted the virus last week, a 32% increase from a week earlier.
This is the highest estimate for the total number of infections since late April, but is still well below the record 4.9 million at the height of the Omicron BA.2 wave in late March.
Dame Jenny called on the “nearly 20% of over-75s” who haven’t had their spring booster yet to come forward.