UK health secretary refuses to rule out further COVID restrictions

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) – British Health Secretary Sajid Javid refused Sunday to rule out further coronavirus restrictions as cases of the omicron variant continue to rise.

“We are assessing the situation. It’s very fast-moving,” Javid said in a press statement. “There’s a lot that we still don’t know about omicron.

“We know this thing is spreading rapidly. We know already that in London, it’s around 80% of infections, [and] in England, it’s around 60% of infections,” he said.

On the issue of further restrictions, he said “there are no guarantees in this pandemic. At this point, we just have to keep everything under review.”

“We will do what is necessary, but it’s got to be backed up by the data. We are watching the data and discussing it with our scientists and our best advisers almost on an hourly basis,” he separately told Sky News.

Javid also said that if further restrictions are needed, parliament would be recalled from its Christmas break.

Meanwhile, the UK Health Security Agency said Sunday that there were a further 12,133 confirmed cases of omicron over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number to 37,101.