Nicola Sturgeon has warned Scotland faces a “potential tsunami” of Omicron cases over the Christmas period as the country grapples with the progress of the new strain of coronavirus.
The First Minister suggested it was a case of ‘when not if’ the variant overtook Delta as the dominant version of the disease, with its doubling time currently estimated to be at just two days.
Ms Sturgeon stopped short of officially ‘cancelling’ Christmas parties but added she would not rule out the reimposition of certain restrictions to halt the spread of the variant.
A total of 5,018 positive cases of the condition were confirmed as part of the Thursday statistics with a further 19 deaths.
Around 110 of those were registered as the Omicron variant through genomic sequencing - up from nine just 10 days ago.
However the First Minister warned that was likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” as genomic sequencing tests for the ‘S-gene dropout’ takes longer to return a result than the standard PCR test.
Speaking at a Scottish Government press conference on Friday, she said: “The fact is that we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of the new Omicron variant.
“To be blunt, we may be facing a potential tsunami of infections.
“It underlines our fear that a new wave may be starting.”
Ms Sturgeon added the R number for the Omicron variant could be as high as three, adding that those who had already been infected with coronavirus may be more susceptible to reinfection.
“What we are seeing in the data just now is perhaps the fastest exponential growth that we’ve seen in the pandemic so far,” she said.
"In the final week of November, if we look at all of the Covid cases recorded in Scotland, there were no days when the proportion of cases with S Gene drop out was higher than one per cent.
"However, by last Sunday, December 5, the proportion had risen to two per cent.
"On Tuesday, it was just over four per cent. On Wednesday it was almost seven per cent, and today, it is 15.5 per cent."
She added: “If that continues, Omicron is going to very quickly overtake Delta as the dominant strain in Scotland.
“We expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks.”
You can follow her speech and all the latest developments on our live Covid blog.
