Omicron: Government Holding Emergency Cobra Meeting On Covid-19 Spread Today

The UK government is holding an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. 

The meeting today, December 10, will be chaired by levelling-up secretary Michael Gove, alongside first ministers and deputy first ministers of the devolved administrations.

‘We need to work collectively – and effectively – as Four Nations to take all reasonable steps to control the ingress of the virus to the country and then to limit its spread,’ it read.

In Scotland, there’s been 19 Covid-linked deaths over the past 24 hours, as well as more than 5,000 confirmed cases. The Omicron variant is expected to become the dominant variant of coronavirus in ‘days, not weeks’, Sturgeon said. The UK total of Omicron cases currently stands at 817.

‘The fact is, we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of of the new Omicron variant. To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissibility of this new variant, we may be facing – indeed we may be starting to experience – a potential tsunami of infections,’ she told a briefing in Edinburgh.

‘Omicron right now is rising exponentially, indeed what we are seeing in the data just now is perhaps the fastest exponential growth that we have seen in this pandemic so far. If that continues, and we have no reason, at this stage, to believe that it won’t, Omicron is going to very quickly overtake Delta as the dominant strain in Scotland.

‘Indeed, I think we can now say with some confidence that we expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks – we estimate this could be as early as the very beginning of next week.’