Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why Omicron may not lead to a surge in hospitalisations

Ambulances outside a hospital (Photo: Getty)

There were two takeaways from last night’s press conference: firstly, the hard data showing that the number of recorded cases of Covid had surged by 19,000 – or 28 per cent – in a single day. Second was the assertion that, as a result, the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. What was lacking was the hard data on hospitalisations and the number of people in hospital. Although you would never have guessed from the tone of the conference, these both fell. The number of people admitted to hospital – a figure which runs a few days in arrears owing to a delay in the four constituent nations of the UK collating their data – fell from 800 to 774, the lowest figure recorded in a week. The number of people in hospital – which is for 14 December – also fell slightly, from 7,687 to 7,673.

It is true, of course, that there is always likely to be a lag between new cases and hospitalisations. Deaths are inevitably going to lag even further behind. Yet Omicron has been with us for nearly three weeks now. We are told that cases are doubling every two days or so. Surely, if it really is going to threaten the NHS, we ought by now to be seeing an uptick in hospitalisations. But where is it? The number of hospitalisations has hovered at between 800 and 1,000 every day, where it’s been since July. There are slightly fewer people in hospital with Covid now than there were a month ago.

‘Surely, if it really is going to threaten the NHS, we ought by now to be seeing an uptick in hospitalisations. But where is it?’

So again, it raises the question: is Omicron a milder disease? There has been some reasonable evidence of this from South Africa, where Omicron has been established for longer and where it is already the dominant strain.

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