Covid hasn’t gone away
Covid cases in the UK jumped by around a million in a week, data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.
There were 4,261,100 infections in the seven days to 19 March, according to the data – an almost 30 per cent jump on the previous week, Sky News reports.
Infections rose by just over a quarter in Scotland, by nearly a third in England, and by nearly more than half in Wales.
Around one in 16 people in private households in England are estimated to have had covid in the week to 19 March, or 3.5 million people – up from one in 20, or 2.7 million people, the week before.
Across the UK as a whole, 4.26 million people were likely to have had covid last week – just short of the 4.3 million in the first week of 2022, which was the highest total since estimates began.
The spike across much of the country is being driven by the Omicron BA.2 variant, a more transmissible form of Omicron, ONS said.
Professor Tim Spector, the lead scientist behind the Zoe covid tracker app, warned “there had never been a riskier time to travel”, The Evening Standard reported.
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