CUT BACKS
RISHI Sunak has backed calls to slash Covid isolation to FIVE days to stop the spiralling NHS staff crisis, it has been reported.
The Chancellor is said to be among ministers supporting isolation being reduced from seven days to help hospital staff struggling to keep up with patients.
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About 60 percent of cabinet are understood to be in favour of the idea, according to one government source, the Telegraph reports.
Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the International Trade Secretary, and Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, are also said to be backing the move as long as it is supported by scientific evidence.
The support comes as a string of hugely positive studies show Omicron IS milder than other strains, with the first official UK report revealing the risk of hospitalisation is 50 to 70 per cent lower than with Delta.
Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
The Sun's Jabs Army campaign is helping get the vital extra vaccines in Brits' arms to ward off the need for any new restrictions.
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Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi declared on Sunday Britain will be the first to put the pandemic behind us, but warned the impacts of Covid could still last another 10 years.
And Zahawi today said there was hope on the horizon as he became the first Cabinet minister to back cutting the self-isolation period from seven to five days.
Speaking on Sky's Trevor Phillips on Sunday, he said: "I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic, and then deal with this however long it remains with us, whether that's five, six, seven, 10 years."
It comes as:
- Covid cases dropped for the fifth day in a row
- The number of hospitals declaring critical incidents is comparable with BEFORE pandemic as ‘cases peaked at New Year’
- The Education Minister insists schools will remain open as he vows ‘I’ll do everything in my power’ to keep students in class
- Free lateral flow tests will ‘absolutely not’ be axed ex-vaccines minister insists after cost-cutting reports
- Experts reveal where you are most likely to catch Covid
Experts have suggested this weekend the deadly bug could soon be like the common cold by spring - with data suggesting 98% of Brits have 'some form' of resistance to Omicron.
And Zahawi hinted steps were being made to loosen the current restrictions - the same day as travel rules were eased to allow Brits to take lateral flow tests instead of PCRs after arriving in the UK.
The former vaccines minister told The Sunday Times that cutting the isolation from seven to five days for Brits who had tested positive for Covid would be "more helpful" after a string of NHS trusts declared emergencies over staffing shortages.
He said the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) were examining the isolation period, explaining: "We have to be careful as to whether we move because what you could end up with is actually a perverse incentive where the spike is higher because people come out of it too early."
He added: "But they said they will review it and if the evidence is there where if you are asymptomatic and you are vaccinated and boosted and you have two days of seven days of negative lateral flow tests they said that they will keep that under review.
"It would certainly help mitigate some of the pressures on schools, on critical workforce and others.
"But I would absolutely be driven by advice from the experts, the scientists, on whether we should move to five days from seven days.
"What you don't want is to create the wrong outcome by higher levels of infection."
Zahawi said that the UKHSA had wanted to review the isolation period.
He added: "If they review it and say they will bring it down to five days that is even better for me, it's even more helpful."
Experts yesterday told The Sun Online the UK is emerging as one of the most immune countries in the world.
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But experts who had initially warned Britain needed to impose harsh measures or face thousands of deaths due to Omicron have now admitted they were wrong.
Modellers who advise the Government admitted that winter deaths by the new strainwould be "substantially" lower than they had anticipated, mainly because the strain is less deadly as they thought Mail Online reports.
Dr Nick Davies and his team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine built the original models assuming Omicron was equally lethal to the Delta strain.
He said: "We now know that doesn’t seem to be at all the case, as people are ending up in hospital with Omicron, but they are not requiring critical care [to the same extent as with Delta]"
"The deaths number will come down very substantially [compared with original estimates]."
He added: "It’s clear that our understanding of Omicron has changed substantially in the last two weeks."
NEW NORMALITY
Other experts have also called for a “new normality” and a focus on disease management to allow people to get back to a normal life.
Dr Clive Dix, former head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said: “It is pointless keeping giving more and more vaccines to people who are not going to get very ill. We should just let them get ill and deal with that.
“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary. Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.
“We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.
“We should consider when we stop testing and let individuals isolate when they are not well and return to work when they feel ready, in the same way we do in a bad influenza season.”
Another top doc has ruled out a "big rise" in hospital admissions and deaths from coronavirus as he said case rates may be stabilising across the country.
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter told Times Radio: "The cases are not going up as fast as they were and may have stabilised over the whole country, but at very high levels and they're not going to come down rapidly.
"We're certainly not going to see a big rise in intensive care admissions and deaths and those really severe outcomes."
I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic.
Nadhim Zahawi
Asked whether Boris Johnson had taken a "gamble" in resisting lockdown measures over the festive period, he replied: "It was a gamble, and you know, all I think the best we can say is he may have got away with it, but we're going to have to see the next few weeks".
Around half a million vaccination appointments are being made available online in England for the 12 to 15-year-olds during January, a senior doctor has said - with slots available at around 500 walk-in sites and 300 centres.
And the Health Secretary has slammed "anti-vaccination fanatics" after he revealed that nine out of ten Covid patients in ICU have not had their booster jab.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Sajid Javid said that a "shocking 70 per cent of Covid patients taking up beds in intensive care were unvaccinated…" before branding "disappointing" that tennis star Djokovic is "fuelling scepticism" about the vaccines.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
There was a total of 141,472 cases reported in the UK Sunday after the 146,390 people reported yesterday when Covid deaths passed the grim milestone of 150,000.
This means cases today dropped for the fifth day in a row as experts who warned of a spike in Omicron deaths admitted they had been wrong.
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