One of the UK's most senior health officials has urged people to wear masks in crowded, enclosed places amid fears Covid hospital admissions are set to hit an 18-month high.
Dame Dr Jenny Harries, one of the UK’s most senior health officials, warned a current wave of the virus has not yet peaked. Speaking on BBC ’s Sunday Morning show, the UK Health Security Agency chief executive said: “It doesn't look as though that wave has finished yet. So we would anticipate that hospital cases will rise and it's possible, quite likely that they will actually peak over the previous BA.2 wave [in March 2022]. But I think the overall impact we won't know. It's easy to say in retrospect - it's not so easy to model forward.”
In that wave of the Omicron BA.2 variant, the number of Covid patients in UK hospitals peaked at just over 20,000 at the start of April. At that time, that was the highest number of Covid patients in UK hospitals since February 2021 - with admissions peaking at over 2,500 a day. Hospital numbers fell between April and June but are now starting to creep up again, as Dame Jenny warned the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants are “pushing and driving” a new wave, as reported in The Mirror
