Boris Johnson has advised people to cut back on Christmas partying and “think carefully” before heading out this festive season, shortly after the UK recorded a record 78,610 daily Covid-19 cases.
However, he insisted that further restrictions were not needed to fight the omicron variant.
Amid warnings that there could soon be 2,000 national coronavirus hospitalisations a day, England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty predicted that Covid-19 “records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks”.
His comment came hours after a top UK health official described omicron as “probably the most significant threat” of the pandemic so far.
Jenny Harries, the head of the UK Health Security Agency, also told MPs the NHS could be in “serious peril” over the variant’s wave.
Given the threat posed by omicron, a slim majority of adults (51 per cent) in the UK are in favour of a two-week national lockdown over Christmas, according to a Savanta ComRes poll.
