Experts have warned people need to 'make sacrifices' over the festive period as Omicron cases continue to rise across the nation.
Two new medical studies suggest the Omicron variant is milder than Professor Andrew Hayward, director of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare and a member of Nervtag, has said.
However, he also told BBC's Today programm e events such as "mass parties" that might take place on New Year's Eve would "provide a big further boost" to the virus.
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He said: "We're not out of the woods yet".
People will have to make "some sacrifices", according to the professor.
He added: "We still need to be cautious about Christmas, I think in many ways the best present you could provide an elderly relative this year is the negative lateral flow before you go.
"We need to still think about protecting the vulnerable, we need to think about protecting the NHS and that will require some sacrifices."
Prof Hayward also said if further covid restrictions were enforced in England he did not think this would mean "the sort of prolonged periods of restrictions that we were talking about before".
He continued: "I think we've got a short-term problem here. I think what people are doing in Wales and Ireland and Scotland and other places in Europe is a proportionate response to a short-term problem, big problem, and the thing is, again, the longer we wait with that, the harder it gets and the less we can influence the size of that peak."
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