On Sunday, December 12, the chief medical officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, along with NHS England director Professor Stephen Powis, announced their recommendation to raise the Covid alert levels from three to four.
Though these alert levels have nothing to do with scale of restrictions imposed, it does describe the state of the coronavirus in the nation.
The current level four alert indicates that the Omicron variant of the virus is spreading fast.
There are five colour-coded Covid alert levels, which are set by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC), a team set up in 2020 who identify changes in infection rates using testing, environmental and workplace data.
What is the level 4 UK Covid Alert and why has it been raised from level 3?
Increasing the UK Covid alert from three to four means that the epidemic is “in general circulation, transmission is high and direct Covid-19 pressure on healthcare services is widespread and substantial or rising”, according to Government guidance.
The statement from UK’s four chief medical officers and Professor Powis read: "Transmission of Covid-19 is already high in the community, mainly still driven by Delta, but the emergence of Omicron adds additional and rapidly increasing risk to the public and healthcare services."
It also said that there has been early evidence of Omicron spreading faster than Delta and evading vaccine protection, adding that hospitalisations due to the variant are already occurring and “likely to increase rapidly."
The last time that the UK Covid alert level was at four was between late February and May in 2021.
What do the different alert levels mean?
The Covid alert system which was unveiled by the government in May 2020 has five levels that assess the risk of the virus on the basis of Covid-19’s reproduction (R) rate. This measures how fast it's spreading.
The five levels are :
Level five – the red level, which signifies a "material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed"
Level four – the amber level, showing high or rising levels of transmission
Level three – indicating that the virus is in general circulation
Level two – showing the number of cases and transmission are low
Level one – the green level, which means Covid-19 is no longer present in the UK
The Covid alert level systems are completely separate and independent from government decisions to ease or tighten restrictions, so a rise in level doesn’t automatically mean any change in Covid rules, unless otherwise specified.
