A ‘devastating’ Covid wave is about to break in the UK, say experts, who have slammed the government’s guidelines as ‘wrong’ and revealed the main symptom for the latest version of the virus. The autumn wave will be made worse by a lack of testing and limited surveillance of the new immune-evasive variants, according to the health leaders.
A total of 1.1 million people in private households tested positive for coronavirus in the latest survey, which covers the seven days to September 17 in England and the week to September 20 in the other three nations, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). That’s a 14 per cent rise in the UK and marks the first time the UK figures have been more than one million since August.
The numbers are still significantly below the 3.8 million weekly infections seen in early July - the peak of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants. But Professor Tim Spector, co-founder of the Covid ZOE app, says the UK was already at the start of the next wave of coronavirus.
