Britain’s Omicron wave continued to collapse today as coronavirus cases fell for the eighth day in a row and hospital admissions remained flat. MailOnline has more.
Another 109,133 people tested positive for the virus across the country in the last 24 hours, Government dashboard data shows, down 39% on the number a week ago.
It is the eight day in a row that new infections have fallen week-on-week and the lowest daily total in more than a fortnight.
Deaths – which are a lagging indicator of the outbreak – have been slowly creeping up in recent days with 335 more victims registered today.
It is unclear if reporting issues over the holidays are still at play, but the seven-day average number of Covid fatalities sits at 261 now compared to 99 a fortnight ago.
Meanwhile, latest hospital data shows there were 2,184 admissions for the virus on January 9th, up 5% compared to the previous. Daily admissions have fallen on three of the past seven days.
NHS leaders have voiced optimism that Omicron’s pressure on hospitals had already peaked and that the eight new Nightingale surge hubs will not be needed.
It came as the country’s largest symptom-tracking study also found that Britain’s Omicron outbreak was falling last week in all age groups and regions except the North East.
King’s College London researchers estimated the number of people falling ill with the virus each day plunged by 12%, with 183,000 symptomatic infections now occurring every day.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Construction workers are putting the finishing touches to the first of the NHS’s Covid surge ‘Hubs’, just as hospitalisations are beginning to fall across the country. The latest NHS England data now shows that more than 50% of hospital patients classified as having Covid are being treated for something else.
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