London shoppers were out in force on Oxford Street as a surge in Omicron led the mayor, Sadiq Khan, to declared a major incident in the capitalMinisters have been warned that delaying action to tackle Omicron until after Christmas could make large numbers of hospital admissions and deaths inevitable. Newly released minutes from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) say it is “almost certain” there are hundreds of thousands of new Omicron infections every day. SponsoredOfficials fear that delaying new measures will allow cases of the variant to continue doubling every two days, with large numbers of people becoming sick and dying. The mayor of London has declared a major incident in the capital because of a “huge surge” in Omicron cases. London has had 129,307 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past seven days, with 25,551 cases reported in the past 24 hours.

Source: The Times December 18, 2021 23:01 UTC