public health service NHS It is already recording the problems due to the large number of individuals who are in quarantine after testing positive. The Sunday Times reported that about 50,000 of his employees took time off work last week due to illness or isolation.
and at least Six hospitals declared “serious accidents”, which means that some important services may be compromised.
The problem also affected the railway service in England Tuesday, the first day of full activity after the Monday holiday, imposed long wait times for travelers returning to work.
The Minister of State for Public Health, Maggie Throop, confirmed to Sky News “I’m not sure” how many Britons are currently in quarantine.
“It has been shown over Christmas that many people have been infected, and the Omicron variant is highly transmissible, but it is good that it does not appear to cause serious illness like some of the other variants,” he said.
According to recent UK regulations, a 10-day quarantine after a positive for coronavirus can be reduced to 7 provided a negative test is taken two days in a row.
To facilitate what the Prime Minister Boris Johnson On Monday he called for “great pressure” on hospitals, and has been asked to make the rule more flexible for health workers, but the government doubts its importance.
On Tuesday, the students went back to school and also faced the possibility The massive absence of teachers and the merging of classes, so much so that the English authorities recalled the retired staff to reinforce the service.
Regardless, Education Minister Nadim Zahawi said on Twitter that “personal education will remain the norm”.
The United Kingdom is one of the countries hardest hit by Covid-19, with nearly 149,000 deaths recorded since the start of the epidemic in its territory, in March 2020.