Ministers will not be making any announcements about future Covid restrictions in England before Christmas, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, has said.
On Tuesday Boris Johnson said no new rules would come into force before Christmas Day, but there had been speculation that a post-Christmas tightening of rules might be announced this week, before a recall of parliament next week.
Javid’s comment on Thursday may be an indication that fresh regulations are becoming less likely, but he stressed that ministers were still tracking the Covid data very closely and that new research suggesting the Omicron variant is less severe than feared did not lift the threat to the NHS.
Speaking to broadcasters, Javid said: “We are not planning any further announcements this week. Despite the caution that we are all taking, people should enjoy their Christmases with their families and their friends – of course, remain cautious.
“We will keep the situation under review. We are learning more all the time as we have done from this new data … and if we need to do anything more we will, but nothing more is going to happen before Christmas.”
Javid said two reports published on Wednesday suggesting people infected with Omicron are at less risk of being hospitalised than people infected with Delta, the last dominant variant, were “of course good, encouraging news”. But he said the studies were “not very clear yet … by how much that risk is reduced”.
He went on: “We do know with Omicron that it does spread a lot more quickly, it is a lot more infectious than Delta, so any advantage gained from reduced risk of hospitalisation needs to be set against that. If a much smaller percentage of people are at risk of hospitalisation, if that is a smaller percentage of a much larger number, there could still be significant hospitalisation.”
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also cautioned about placing too much reliance on the new data at the final session of first minister’s questions before the Christmas recess.
The Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, asked why she was not following the example of the UK government and allowing people to isolate for just seven days, not 10, after testing positive, if lateral flow tests later showed they were no longer infectious.
Ross said a reduction in days was necessary to protect essential services and the economy from a rise in isolation-related absences, adding: “These rules are forcing whole families to self-isolate for 10 days, even if they have tested negative.”
Sturgeon said sector-based exemptions to self-isolation rules had been published earlier in Scotland, but she would not make wider changes until the public health benefits outweighed the risks.
“If we allow this spread of Omicron to get too far ahead of us, then even if it is significantly less severe, that is going to overwhelm us,” she said. “So anything we do right now that risks increasing spreads, such as removing self-isolation rules, or weakening self-isolation rules too quickly, actually could be seriously counterproductive.
“If we act rashly right now, then what we risk is a counterproductive effect … These studies are really positive but they are also early data. When even the authors are saying ‘don’t get carried away yet with what these studies are telling you’, then I think we should listen.”
