Ross Clark Ross Clark

Does Warwick’s Omicron modelling make restrictions more likely?

(Photo: Getty)

Two weeks ago, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College both published modelling showing frightening scenarios if the government did not react to the Omicron variant by imposing immediate restrictions on our day to day lives. The former suggested that hospitalisations could peak at 7,190 a day in January in its most pessimistic scenario; the latter was reported as suggesting that deaths might peak at 5,000 a day in January. Both figures, however, were made on the assumption that Omicron was every bit as virulent as the Delta variant. Since then, several UK studies have suggested that this is not the case, with data showing it is between 20 per cent and two thirds less likely to land us in hospital. A South African study puts it higher, at 80 per cent less risk.

Today, however, another of Sage’s modelling teams has modelled a scenario which does assume that Omicron is less severe than Delta. Warwick University has worked around a central assumption of a decline in severity of 50 per cent. The numbers of projected hospitalisations and deaths, however, do not come out hugely more favourably. In fact, the Warwick team is forecasting an even higher peak of hospitalisations. If no further restrictions are placed on the public, Warwick predicts hospitalisations peaking at 13,600 a day and deaths at 2,890. The latter figure would be twice as high as that observed in January 2021, the deadliest peak of the whole pandemic in Britain.

If no further restrictions are placed on the public, Warwick predicts hospitalisations peaking at 13,600 a day and deaths at 2,890

Warwick also modelled what it thinks would have happened had a ‘short, stringent circuit-breaker’ been imposed between 19 December and 15 January or had it been imposed later on 26 December. In the former case, its model suggests, hospitalisations would have been kept below 2,000 a day but would have spiked to 12,000 in a subsequent peak in February/March.

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