Neil Ferguson warns full lockdown might be needed to stop Omicron overwhelming NHS
Professor Neil Ferguson warns a full lockdown might be needed to stop Omicron overwhelming NHS as he says super-variant may have been seeded at COP26 summit in Glasgow
Ferguson – who was dubbed Prof Lockdown – said return of stay-at-home orders ‘certainly might be possible’Growing concerns about UK Christmas freedoms after number of British Omicron cases rose to 437 yesterdayNo10 is already drawing up new plans for Britons to work from home and offices to shut, according to reports
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‘Professor Lockdown ‘ Neil Ferguson refused to rule out a lockdown and claimed WFH could slow Omicron down and buy the UK precious time
‘Professor Lockdown‘ Neil Ferguson today refused to rule out another nationwide shutdown to tackle the Omicron super variant as he warned that it will be dominant before Christmas.
The Government scientist, whose modelling bounced No10 into the original lockdown last spring, said the return of stay-at-home orders ‘certainly might be possible’ if the mutant strain threatens to overwhelm the NHS.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: ‘There is a rationale, just epidemiologically, to try and slow this down, to buy us more time principally to get boosters into people’s arms because we do think people who are boosted will have the best level of protection possible, but also to buy us more time to really better characterise the threat.’
It is unclear how the British public would react to fresh social restrictions over Christmas after allegations surfaced this week that Boris Johnson held a rule-breaking lockdown party in Downing Street last December, when millions of Britons were unable to visit loved ones.
There are growing concerns about festive freedoms after the total number of British Omicron cases rose to 437 yesterday, with the highly evolved variant now in every country in the UK and almost every region of England.
But experts warn thousands of cases are flying under the radar because not all samples are analysed for variants and Omicron is estimated to be doubling every two or three days — much faster than when Delta exploded on the scene.
According to reports, No10 is already drawing up new plans for Britons to work from home and for offices to be closed in an attempt to avoid bringing in last-minute Christmas curbs. One source said Mr Johnson was given a ‘sobering’ briefing by his chief scientists yesterday in an effort to soften up ministers for tougher curbs.
Ministers are due to review the current suite of anti-Omicron measures — compulsory masks and stricter travel testing — on December 18, which has raised fears that Britons could be stung by last-minute curbs just days before Christmas.
Professor Ferguson said light measures like WFH ‘wouldn’t stop it but it could slow it down’ and buy the country precious time, extending the doubling time to five or six days. ‘That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it actually is potentially a lot in terms of allowing us to characterise this virus better and boost population immunity,’ he added.
Omicron cases are concentrated in London and in Scotland. As Britain’s major transport hub, London has often been the UK’s epicentre for new variants. But Professor Ferguson claimed Omicron might have been seeded in Glasgow at the Cop26 climate summit at the start of November in Glasgow.
The Imperial College London scientist said that while Omicron was concerning, it is still unclear what impact it will have on severe disease, hospitalisations and deaths. The first lab study of the super-variant in South Africa last night found that people given two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine produce forty times less antibodies when exposed to Omicron.
Professor Ferguson said the finding suggests Omicron will cut the effectiveness of current vaccines on mild disease in half, but he said they should still hold up against severe illness.
Eminent epidemiologist Professor Tim Spector claimed infections of the highly evolved variant were doubling every two days. The above graph shows how the number of daily cases of Omicron could breach the 100,000 barrier before New Year’s Day, if that pace continues
Professor Ferguson suggested people may be told to work from home in the near future as Omicron is spreading fast, with the variant set to take over from the Delta strain before Christmas.
Speaking in a personal capacity, he told Today: ‘Certainly case numbers of Omicron are doubling at least every three days, maybe even every two days at the moment, so it’s accelerating very fast and put that in context, it’s the same if not faster than we saw with the original strain of the virus in March of last year. So it is a concern.
‘It’s likely to overtake Delta before Christmas at this rate, precisely when is hard to say.
‘We’ll start seeing an impact on overall case numbers – it’s still probably only 2 per cent, 3 per cent of all cases so it’s kind of swamped, but within a week or two, we’ll start seeing overall case numbers accelerate quite markedly as well.’
Professor Ferguson said the peak of this wave of infection will be in January if no measures are taken to slow it down.
‘So if you don’t do anything at the current time, it will most likely be sometime in January. But I think the key question is whether the country decides to adopt measures to either slow it down or try to stop it and that will critically depend on really the threat it poses in terms of hospitalisations.
‘At the moment, we don’t really have a good handle on the severity of this virus, there’s a little hint in the UK data that infections are a little bit more likely to be asymptomatic, but we really need to firm up that evidence at the current time.’
Asked whether people should be told to work from home, he said: ‘It will be up to the Government to decide what to announce in the coming days and weeks.
‘There is a rationale, just epidemiologically, to try and slow this down, to buy us more time principally to get boosters into people’s arms because we do think people who are boosted will have the best level of protection possible, but also to buy us more time to really better characterise the threat.
‘So if you imagine a kind of Plan B Plus with working from home might slow it down – it wouldn’t stop it but it could slow it down, so it’s doubling rather than every two or three days, every five or six days.
‘That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it actually is potentially a lot in terms of allowing us to characterise this virus better and boost population immunity.’
Regarding lockdowns, Prof Ferguson said it was very difficult to rule out anything, adding that we ‘haven’t got a good enough handle on the threat’.
He added: ‘Clearly, if the consensus is it is highly likely that the NHS is going to be overwhelmed then it will be for the Government to decide what what he wants to do about that, but it’s a difficult situation to be in of course.’
Pushed on whether lockdowns might be possible, he said: ‘It certainly might be possible at the current time.’
Earlier, Prof Ferguson pointed to a new lab-based study from South Africa suggesting the Pfizer vaccine works less well against Omicron.
He added: ‘There’s a little bit of preliminary work even from the UK which suggests if you’ve had two doses, for instance of Pfizer, then just protection against mild disease may be roughly halved.
‘But we think that protection against severe disease is much more likely to be maintained at the high level, but we don’t have firm data on that. That’s just based on extrapolation from past experience.’
The professor also said that visitors coming to Scotland for the climate change conference Cop26 last month may have caused early seeding there, but he added this was ‘speculation’.
It comes as Health Secretary Sajid Javid pulled out of a key broadcast interview following the emergence of leaked footage showing Government aides joking about a festive gathering last year.
In footage obtained by ITV News and released on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s then-press secretary Allegra Stratton and adviser Ed Oldfield, along with other aides, were filmed laughing about a ‘fictional’ Downing Street party in December 2020.
The Today programme said Mr Javid was scheduled to feature on Wednesday morning, but cancelled after the footage emerged.
Meanwhile, the new study on Omicron from South Africa suggests it appears to reduce the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine though experts said a booster shot could help.
The study, which has been published online but not peer-reviewed, found that antibodies produced by vaccinated people were less good at keeping the Omicron variant from infecting cells than other forms of the coronavirus.
While some experts said the data was concerning, it only covers one part of the immune system and did not look at T cell immunity, which is thought to play a role in longer-term protection.
Researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban used a lab study to look at the effect of Pfizer on Omicron and found about a 40-fold reduction in levels of neutralising antibodies produced by people who had received two doses of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine, compared with original Wuhan strain of the virus.
Professor Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, who led the research, told reporters: ‘While I think there’s going to be a lot of infection, I’m not sure this is going to translate into systems collapsing.
‘My guess is that it’ll be under control.’
Prof Sigal also tweeted last night: ‘Just be be clear on something…this was better than I expected of Omicron.’
