`We have confirmed 4,713 cases of infection with the Omicron variant in the UK. The UK Health Security Agency estimates that the current number of daily infections is about 200,000,` British Health Minister Sajid Javid said on December 13 during the session.
The information Secretary Javid gave immediately caused a stir, because it was nearly four times higher than the number of new Covid-19 cases recorded that day.
The number of 200,000 Omicron cases immediately appeared on the front page of many major British newspapers.
A person wears protective goggles to prevent nCoV infection outside St Thomas’ hospital in London on December 12.
nCoV is clearly spreading rapidly in the UK.
The British government confirmed that as of December 15, at least 10,017 people were infected with the Omicron variant.
But the terrible number that Secretary Javid gave is not data drawn from actual counting or gene sequencing.
The mathematical model used by Javid shows that Omicron cases double every two days in the UK, based on the current social behavior of the country’s people.
Britain is the leading country in vaccination efforts and gene sequencing to detect and track mutations.
Another reason why the number of Omicron cases in the UK is high may be because the country’s epidemic prevention measures are less focused than in other European countries.
To determine the trend of Omicron, researchers at the British Health Security Agency built a special calculation model, because they believe that the actual number of nCoV infections in the population far exceeds the number of recorded cases.
Of those who tested positive, only a small portion of their samples were sent for genetic sequencing to find the Omicron strain.
Using the above data, researchers at the UK Health Security Agency said that as of November 30, there were 1,219 British people infected with the Omicron variant and this number doubled every 2.5 days.
At such a rate, the researchers’ modeling predicts more than a million Britons will be infected with the Omicron strain by Christmas Day, although the trend may slow thanks to human immunity and changes in human health.
According to two experts who are not part of the British Health Security Agency, the number of 200,000 Omicron cases announced by Secretary Javid earlier this week seems to be based on the rate of infections doubling after about 1.9 days.
`This is just an approximate calculation,` commented Simon R. Clarke, associate professor of cellular microbiology at the University of Reading.
However, the number of 200,000 Omicron cases still rings alarm bells not only in the UK, a country tired of the pandemic, but also in many other countries that are closely monitoring the Omicron strain to determine the possibility of transmission.
Some experts believe that Minister Javid may want to warn the British to take epidemic prevention recommendations from officials more seriously and speed up the pace of vaccination when given such shocking numbers.
British Health Secretary Sajid Javid spoke at a press conference in Downing Street last month.
However, analysts say that the British government, which has repeatedly been harshly criticized for failing to communicate information to the public about the pandemic, has failed to explain clearly to the public what it has given.
Dr. Jenny Harries, head of the British Health Security Agency, told officials on December 15 that it was too early to assess the potential risk of the Omicron variant and warned that the virus was developing at a `speed`
`The biggest problem for me is not the number of 200,000 cases, but the way it is communicated,` said David Spiegelhalter, a statistics expert at the University of Cambridge.
