The UK is already in a ‘devastating’ new Covid wave that could ruin an already browbeaten NHS, experts say.
Covid cases crept up by 14% last week, with more than 1.1 million people testing positive, according to the Office for National Statistics.
What’s causing the new wave is unclear, but experts feel the government’s ‘wrong’ list of Covid symptoms means people may be unknowingly spreading the virus without realising it.
Professor Tim Spector, a co-founder of the Zoe Health Study, a phone app that tracks the spread of Covid, told The Independent: ‘It looks like we’re in the start of the next wave and this time it’s affected older people slightly earlier than the last wave.’
Professor Spector warned that official data may seem high but it underscores the problem, given that testing is not as common.
And crucially, the Covid virus the world is dealing with today isn’t the same as the one that first broke out in 2020.
‘Many people are still using the government guidelines about symptoms which are wrong,’ he added.
‘At the moment, Covid starts in two-thirds of people with a sore throat. Fever and loss of smell are really rare now – so many old people may not think they’ve got Covid.
‘They’d say it’s a cold and not be tested.’
Omicron, the 13th named variant of the coronavirus, has a few more tricks compared to earlier versions of the virus.
Some subvariants of Omnicron, such as BA.2.75.2, are extremely rare but have the ability to evade immune systems better than all other forms of Omnicron.
These sneakier variants could pose ‘real problems’ with the NHS ‘already on its knees’, University of Warwick virologist Professor Lawrence Young said.
‘We can only detect variants or know what’s coming by doing sequencing from PCR testing, and that’s not going on anywhere near the extent it was a year ago,’ he said.
‘People are going to get various infections over the winter but won’t know what they are because free tests aren’t available – it’s going to be a problem.’
But public health officials’ woes don’t end there, Professor Young added.
The government shrinking any kind of Covid support, from testing to subsidised wages for those infected, means the country is ‘blind’ to the true scale of Covid.
He said: ‘Another angle is the economic pressure. If people do feel poorly they’re not likely to take time off work.
‘You have a perfect storm here, really, of inadequate surveillance, people not coming forward for vaccination and the economic situation.’
Overall, Covid cases have increased by 65% from the average two weeks ago in the UK, while deaths have risen by 13%.
The nationwide total hasn’t been above one million since late August.
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