World Health Organisation expert Dr David Nabarro says he has “never been more concerned” than he is tonight about the rapidly-worsening coronavirus situation in the UK.
The WHO’s Special Envoy on Covid-19 says that even if the Omicron variant of Covid-19 does cause less severe disease than previous variants, the sheer number of cases threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems.
He told Sky News that this is an "emergency situation" for the NHS which will get "extremely serious" within the next two weeks – or "perhaps quicker".
He added that there was "no way" of knowing how bad the situation will become.
He said that he was concerned "not just about the UK, but about the world," adding: "I want to stress the absolute number of people who are going to get infected, some of whom will be people who have had double vaccination, this absolute number is going to lead to an already massively stressed health system… being further overloaded."
ITV’s political expert Robert Peston said that current figures are being under-reported.
He tweeted: "I‘ve been banging on for months about how unsatisfactory it is that daily Covid19 infection figures exclude re-infections.
"Today’s record 78,610 still re-infections, even though Omicron re-infects significant numbers who’ve had Covid19 previously," he stressed.
He added that the current official reporting system was "nuts".
Dr Nabarro warns that we are currently in a "very serious situation," with the potential to get dramatically worse, saying: "Today is just the beginning of an extraordinary acceleration".
"We have enough information in the World Health Organisation to indicate very clearly that this spreads super fast with a doubling time of numbers of cases every two to three days."
However, he added, if we are lucky we "won't have high death rates"
He warned: "I'm not speaking with any political message or any ideological message, butI think we have a pretty serious problem coming up in the coming weeks."
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