Covid: More restrictions a last resort, Sajid Javid says

Further Covid restrictions in England must be an “absolute last resort”, Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said, despite rising case numbers in the UK.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr Javid said the UK must look to “live alongside” coronavirus in 2022.

The number of people in intensive care was not following the same trajectory as this time last year, he said.

But he warned there would be a big increase in the number of people needing NHS care in the next month.

This is “likely to test the limits” of NHS capacity more than a typical winter, he said.

On Friday UK daily Covid cases reached another record high of 189,846.

New Year’s Eve celebrations were scaled back across much of the UK as the more infectious Omicron variant continues to drive up cases.

England is currently under the government’s Plan B restrictions which mean face coverings are compulsory in most indoor venues and on public transport, while people should work from home if they can.

The government resisted calls to impose new regulations in England in the run-up to the new year, diverging from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where tighter rules are now in place for pubs, bars and restaurants.

Mr Javid said England had “welcomed in 2022 with some of the least restrictive measures in Europe”.

He said: “Curbs on our freedom must be an absolute last resort and the British people rightly expect us to do everything in our power to avert them.

“Since I came into this role six months ago, I’ve also been acutely conscious of the enormous health, social and economic costs of lockdowns.

“So I’ve been determined that we must give ourselves the best chance of living alongside the virus and avoiding strict measures in the future.”

But Mr Javid acknowledged the pandemic was “far from over”.

It was inevitable there would be a big increase in Covid patients requiring NHS treatment over the next month, he said, because of the lag between infections and hospital admissions.

Friday’s coronavirus figures showed daily hospital admissions were up to 1,915, as of 27 December, compared with 1,506 the previous day.

There was also a further 203 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

The problem facing the government is that the window to suppress the peak with restrictions may already have passed.

Modelling produced for government by Warwick University shows even a return to lockdown with only schools open has virtually no impact on hospitalisations now.

To have had a significant impact measures would need to have been introduced on Boxing Day or a week earlier.

But even then the argument for them was unclear – in both scenarios infections and hospitalisations rebound once restrictions are lifted. Largely all it achieves is delaying and spreading out illness.

That could have been of benefit by evening out the pressure on the NHS.

But there is, of course, the wider costs of restrictions to society, the economy and mental health to factor in.

Some say it would also have bought you time to carry out more vaccinations, but with nine in 10 of the most vulnerable boosted and evidence protection wanes over time this may actually be the point in time when we have the most immunity across the population.

There are no simple solutions to this Omicron wave – and the options that the government did have may well have gone.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that he hoped people had “a great time” on New Year’s Eve but said it was important not to be complacent, either in terms of policy or personal behaviour.

He told BBC Breakfast: “I understand how much people want things to return to normal and I’m confident that as this year progresses we will be able to do that and we all hope that 2022 is the year in which coronavirus just becomes an illness that we live with not an illness that dominates our lives.

“But you can have the optimism but still recognise that the next few weeks are going to be very tough and we need to do whatever is necessary to get us through these next few weeks.”

He said the country had to press on with the booster programme, with people “understandably” not coming forward over the Christmas period, and said NHS leaders would have to make tough decisions – which could include stopping visitors to hospitals.

A leading statistician who advises the government said the UK’s daily Covid-19 cases could be closer to 500,000 due to the testing system being overstretched and reinfections not being counted in the government data.

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge told the BBC: “This is a huge, unprecedented wave of infection and very daunting.”

But he added that deaths were “not yet going up” and that the country could be “fairly optimistic” about avoiding the kind of pressures seen during the last winter wave.

Meanwhile, leading figures in the UK’s response to coronavirus have been recognised in the New Year Honours.

England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam, who became household names during the Covid-19 pandemic, have been knighted.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, and Dr June Raine, head of the vaccines regulator MHRA, have both been made dames.

The government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, who was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours list, is elevated to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.