Nicola Sturgeon today announced entire families in Scotland will have to self-isolate for 10 days if one member of the household tests positive for coronavirus as she unveiled new Covid restrictions and warned the nation is facing a ‘tsunami’ of Omicron cases.
The Scottish First Minister said that as of tomorrow ‘all household contacts of any confirmed Covid case should isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test’.
Ms Sturgeon said she knew this would not be ‘easy’ and that there will be ‘careful exemptions for critical services’.
However, she insisted the move is ‘essential at this moment’ because of the rapid spread of the new variant.
The SNP leader said non-household contacts of a positive case should continue to self-isolate, pending a PCR test and if that test is negative they can leave isolation as long as they are double-jabbed.
Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon also urged people in Scotland to defer work Christmas parties as she said limiting ‘unnecessary contacts’ is the ‘sensible’ thing to do to slow transmission of the disease.
It came as it emerged that the UK Government is already working on a ‘Plan C’ of Covid restrictions, just days after Boris Johnson triggered his ‘Plan B’.
Michael Gove is due to hold a COBRA meeting this afternoon with the first ministers of the devolved administrations to discuss the latest Covid data and the UK response.
Ms Sturgeon told a coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh at lunchtime that as of yesterday at 5pm there were 110 confirmed Omicron cases in Scotland and 10 days ago the number was just nine.
She warned the latest figure is likely to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and the data suggests the current spread of Omicron represents the ‘fastest exponential growth that we have seen in this pandemic so far’.
Ms Sturgeon said the number of Omicron cases is doubling every two to three days and the variant could overtake Delta as the dominant strain ‘within days’.
She said the R number in Scotland – the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected person – had been ‘hovering’ around one in recent weeks but the R number for Omicron is ‘likely to be well over two and possibly closer to three’ which could result in a ‘rapid rise’ in cases in the days ahead.
‘The fact is we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of of the new Omicron variant, ‘ she said.
‘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 added: ‘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.’
The highly-evolved variant is now behind 8.5 per cent of the UK’s coronavirus cases compared to just four per cent at the start of the week, according to an analysis of UK Health Security Agency data.
Scotland — where it’s feared Omicron was seeded during the Cop26 climate change summit in early November — and London are being hit hardest by Omicron but the strain has been detected in every country in the UK and nearly every region.
The UK Government is already considering a tougher ‘Plan C’ to tackle Omicron which could see care homes slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants.
Controversial vaccine passports could also be extended to more venues as part of the contingency measures being floated within Downing Street if the Omicron super variant proves to be as dangerous as scientists fear.
A UK Government source said it was ‘very likely’ care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector.
But campaign groups warned the plans could be ‘devastating’ and ‘heartbreaking’, with many families forced to pick loved ones on what could be their last Christmas.
Other curbs in a ‘Plan C’ could include having to ‘check in’ with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues.
The first part of the Government’s Plan B came into force today with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches. New work-from-home guidance will come into effect on Monday, and MPs will vote on Tuesday on the introduction of vaccine passports for nightclubs and large venues.
Labour has said it will support the rollout of Plan B, despite a suggestion that many opposition MPs could vote down the measures in protest against ongoing accusations that Number 10 held a number of lockdown-breaking parties last winter.
But backbench Tory MPs have told MailOnline that the Government could face its biggest mutiny yet, with at least 60 Conservative MPs expected to defy the government whip and vote down the plans.
The above map shows the ten areas that have the most confirmed Omicron cases in England, according to the UK Health Security Agency. West Northamptonshire is the country’s hotspot for the mutant strain, although eight in ten areas on the list are in London
There are currently 817 confirmed cases of Omicron in the UK so far but thousands are said to be flying under the radar because not all positive samples are analysed
Confidential UK Health Security Agency data showed that Omicron may now be behind 8.5 per cent of infections. The figures are based on the proportion of PCR tests failing to detect a specific gene, an early indicator of the variant. PCRs look for three genes to confirm a Covid infection, but with Omicron one is so mutated that they only pick up two of them
The first part of the Government’s Plan B came into force today with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches. Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that ministers hope the measures will be enough to ‘slow the spread’ of the Omicron variant while more booster jabs are rolled out
The great Christmas exodus from the office began hours after Boris Johnson announced his Omicron Plan B with Tube and bus travel down and road traffic also plunging to its lowest level since October, MailOnline can reveal today
The UKHSA found that cases rose in 90 per cent of local authorities last week in England. It comes amid the spread of the Omicron variant
The latest coronavirus developments came as:
- Ministers insisted they are ‘trying to get the balance right between not shutting the economy down’ and protecting against coronavirus by rolling out ‘Plan B’ restrictions.
- Scotland recorded 19 coronavirus-linked deaths and 5,018 cases recorded in the past 24 hours. Cases of the new Covid-19 variant could reach just shy of 25,000 a day before the end of the month, a Scottish Government evidence paper said.
- Sir Keir Starmer said Labour will support the rollout of ‘Plan B’ in a House of Commons vote next week because ‘in this pandemic we have always put the public interest and public health first and that’s what we’ll do next week in supporting these measures’.
- Downing Street said it was up to individual businesses to decide whether Christmas parties should go ahead as Number 10 cancelled its own gathering.
Ms Sturgeon announced two new interventions at lunchtime in a bid to slow the spread of the Omicron variant: Tougher isolation rules and strengthened guidance to defer Christmas parties.
‘Given that Omicron is now becoming dominant, our response to it has to become more general because it will quickly be the case that most people who have Covid have the Omicron variant and we must do all we can in that context to break the transmission chains,’ she said.
‘Therefore from tomorrow our advice will be that all household contacts of any confirmed Covid case should isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test.
‘I know that this is not easy and we will obviously keep it under review. We will also ensure careful exemptions for critical services.
‘But we believe this to be essential at this moment to help slow transmission. Non-household contacts should continue to isolate pending a PCR result. If that is negative they can leave isolation at that point as long as they are double vaccinated.’
Public Health Scotland yesterday published new advice on work Christmas parties and Ms Sturgeon urged Scots to follow it.
‘This is not easy advice to give or to hear but it is incumbent on public health experts to set out very clearly and frankly the risks we face and it is incumbent on me and government to pay attention to that advice,’ she said.
‘There is a significant risk with Omicron and we are already seeing the reality of it, of Christmas parties or events with lots of people becoming super-spreaders.
‘If that happens, lots of people get infected and if these are work events as well as the risk to individual health there is a risk to the ability of the workplace to operate as people have to isolate.’
She added: ‘The public health advice, which I have no alternative but to agree with given the evidence of risk that I know about and have now shared with you, is that we should all think a bit more carefully about unnecessary contacts, especially in crowded places just now and that it would be sensible to defer work Christmas parties.’
Ms Sturgeon said that while evidence suggests Omicron can evade some immunity given by vaccines, people should still get jabbed.
‘Based on preliminary laboratory trials, the best evidence suggests it can evade to some extent the immunity conferred by vaccination,’ she said.
‘Now, and I want to triple underline this point, that does not mean that the vaccines will not significantly help us – being less effective is not the same, nowhere near the same, as vaccines being ineffective and booster doses in particular will help retain a higher level of vaccine efficiency.’
Ms Sturgeon said the greater transmissibility of the new variant represents a threat to the NHS even if the strain is found to be less severe than its predecessors.
She said that ‘a smaller percentage of a bigger number will still result in a massive number of cases who might need hospital care’.
She added: ‘Given the volume of people who could be infected by Omicron because of its greater transmissibility, even if most of those cases are mild, the number of cases of serious illness will put massive strain on the ability of the NHS to cope.’
Ms Sturgeon also said she cannot rule out further restrictions being put in place in Scotland as a result of the Omicron variant.
Ministers are hoping the Government’s ‘Plan B’ will be enough to slow the spread of Omicron in England while more booster jabs are administered.
But as shops, pubs and restaurants warn of the millions they face losing at their busiest time of year under the new measures, officials are already working on another back-up strategy.
The looming threat of tighter restrictions in the run-up to Christmas, which has echoes of this time last year, come amid fury at Mr Johnson’s decision to impose ‘Plan B’ measures yesterday, on the same day that he tried to grapple with the fallout of the Downing Street Christmas party scandal.
He is set to face a ‘war’ with his backbenchers when the measures are voted on next week. They reacted furiously to the planned introduction of vaccine passports next week – and took aim at the ‘conflicting’ guidance on working from home and socialising, with no official advice to cancel festive parties.
A source told The Telegraph that it is ‘highly likely’ care homes will once again be hit by restrictions, with ministers looking at limiting the number of visitors to three.
The move would reportedly come in time for Christmas to limit the amount of mixing in homes during the festive period.
But the plans have been slammed by campaign groups, who say they will force families to make ‘devastating’ decisions about who gets to see loved ones on possibly their last Christmas.
Rights for Residents told the newspaper: ‘It just takes us back to where we were many months ago, and the impact it will have on families will be devastating.
‘It’s absolutely heartbreaking for families to have to choose who can visit them. How do you pick those three people?’
Mr Johnson is facing a Tory rebellion next week when the ‘Plan B’ rules will be voted on in the House of Commons.
At least 50 Tories have publicly expressed concerns, and a senior Conservative said Mr Johnson needed to ‘get a grip’.
Ringleaders have told MailOnline that it will be the biggest mutiny faced by the PM yet, with at least 60 expected to defy the government whip.
Backbencher Marcus Fysh said on Thursday that the latest curbs are an ‘utter disgrace’, while former chief whip Mark Harper has questioned whether the government has the moral authority to impose the limits given the row over rules being flouted in Downing Street.
There was a further setback when the NHS Covid pass website crashed for several hours last night.
In signs of Cabinet tensions, Sajid Javid yesterday dismissed a hint from the PM that mandatory vaccination might be looked at in future, saying that would be ‘ethically wrong’.
And the Health Secretary revealed that he refused to continue with a scheduled round of broadcast interviews on Wednesday because he was ‘upset’ by the bombshell video of No10 aides giggling about an alleged lockdown-busting festive gathering last year.
The scale of the damage to the Tories from the partying revelations, which followed the Westminster sleaze row, has been underlined with a poll showing 63 per cent of voters think the PM should resign.
Labour also had a four-point lead in the Redfield & Wilton poll, the largest since the 2019 general election.
On Wednesday, Mr Johnson announced a sudden shift in the Government’s approach to tackling coronavirus, with an extension of mask-wearing from Thursday, a return to working from home on Monday and mandatory Covid passports for large venues from Wednesday.
The move provoked a barrage of Tory criticism, fuelled by suspicions the measures were introduced as an attempt to distract from the Prime Minister’s troubles over an alleged staff party in Downing Street during last December’s lockdown.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a senior member of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs, said Mr Johnson must ‘get a grip’ or risk losing the backing of his party.
He warned the PM that if his ‘bad month’ – which also saw fury over Tory sleaze – continued in the New Year, ‘then I think there would be a serious change of mind of giving him the benefit of the doubt’.
The scale of the Tory revolt means Mr Johnson may have to rely on Opposition support if his Plan B measures are to clear the Commons on Tuesday. Labour has said it will back the regulations, while the Liberal Democrats will support working from home but not vaccine passports.
A senior Tory source warned: ‘I think we will get it through with Opposition support, but there will be such a bloodbath within our party when the dissatisfaction sets in.’
Tory MP David Warburton labelled Plan B ‘confused, contradictory, arbitrary and wholly disproportionate’, adding: ‘This insanity needs to end.’ The new measures will not stop colleagues meeting at a pub to work, and officials suggested an exemption on face-covering rules would allow people to remove their masks in shops or cinemas to sing.
Tory Greg Smith said: ‘Go to the pub, but don’t go to work, wear a mask when shopping (unless you want to sing)… where will this end?’
Mansfield MP Ben Bradley branded vaccine passports ‘ineffective and discriminatory’, and said he could not ‘vote for restrictions ‘just in case’ at a time when hospitalisations and deaths are falling’.
Asked whether Tory rebels will be putting lives at risk, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘The advice that we have received is without action – given the incredibly fast growth rate of this variant – the consequences, in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, could be severe.’
Sir Keir today said that Labour will vote in favour of the ‘Plan B’ measures. He said: ‘Obviously, we’re being urged to vote against them – because there’s a rebellion on the Government side.
‘But in this pandemic we have always put the public interest and public health first and that’s what we’ll do next week in supporting these measures.’
He said his party would decline the temptation of trying to take political advantage of any Tory rebellion.
‘I think that’s the wrong thing to do in a pandemic because it’s very important the Labour Party acts in the national interest,’ he said.
‘Having listened to the medical advisers, I am convinced that in the national interest we should support these measures, and therefore that’s what we will do.’
Several Cabinet ministers, including Kwasi Kwarteng, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps, are understood to feel Plan B is unnecessary at this point.
Tory former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the Cabinet was ‘full of scaredy-cats’ who panic rather than resist fresh curbs.
Questioned in a round of interviews on Thursday morning over whether it makes sense to instruct staff to work from home but go to parties and other social events, Mr Javid said: ‘I think it is proportionate, actually, when you look at these measures, whether it is the working-from-home guidance, the rules around face masks, the NHS Covid pass, and all of these.
‘It is a real sort of spectrum of response that you can have.
‘It could be guidance, you could have Covid passes clearly in more settings, you could have face masks in more settings, but you have to take a balanced decision that takes into account a number of factors and, of course, the key here is to slow the spread of the new variant, and these measures will help do that.’
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We, of course, keep them under review, but they will have a significant impact in slowing the spread of the variant.’
Economic experts have criticised the restrictions ahead of the crucial pre-Christmas period, warning they could cost the economy £4billion a month and ‘easily’ knock two per cent off the size of the economy.
The hospitality industry said Plan B will kill off festive trade – a period when pubs, nightclubs and restaurants make a third of their annual profits. There are calls for a return to furlough and cash grants for restaurants, pubs, cafes, and bars.
Clive Wilson, Chairman of The City Pub Company, said together with rising energy costs and other pressures he expected to price of a pint to rise by around 40p.
‘For restaurants and the late night economy – a third of your profit is made in December. People have described this as a body blow – it’s more than that – it’s taking off the life support machine yet again,’ he said.
‘And I notice that the Chancellor is not providing any further state aid. ‘The current state aid is not enough. Please please give us that enhanced state aid to help us get through those leaner months otherwise a lot of businesses in our sector will run out of cash.’
The current rate of the booster rollout means Britain will miss the deadline to offer every eligible adult a Covid booster shot by the end January, instead hitting this target by 10 February
According to NHS data, many older age groups who have been eligible to get a Covid booster since September still have double digit percentage figures of people who are yet to get a third dose. Yesterday, the NHS online booking system for Covid boosters was opened up to the over 40s. 81 per cent of people aged 40-to-49 have yet to have a booster.
Economic experts also criticised the move ahead of the crucial pre-Christmas period, warning they could cost the economy £4 billion a month and ‘easily’ knock 2 per cent off the size of the economy.
Lord Sugar tweeted that the Prime Minister must be removed from office, saying: ‘Plan B. Boris is mental. Work from home but you can go to nightclubs and football matches if you are double vax. The man must go. Correct me if I am wrong but I have not heard of any one who had to go to hospital with this new strain let alone die. Small BIZ will collapse’.
Road congestion in London was on Thursday at its lowest level of the week so far for the morning rush hour, with TomTom data giving a figure of 68 per cent between 8am and 9am this morning.
This was down from 75 per cent yesterday, 79 per cent on Tuesday and 69 per cent on Monday for the same time period. It was also down on Thursday of last week, which was 73 per cent.
TomTom data also revealed that Thursday saw the lowest congestion on a midweek day of Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday since the start of November.
It was last at such a low level when Thursday, November 4 had the same figure as Thursday of 68 per cent.
The midweek day analysis is important because in recent months many workers have been working from home on Mondays and Fridays but going into the office from Tuesday to Thursday.
The congestion level represents the extra travel time for drivers on average compared to baseline uncongested conditions – so a 68 per cent level means a 30-minute trip will take 20 minutes more than with no traffic.
In the Commons last night, Mr Harper said the evidence on the spread of Omicron, which has yet to hospitalise a single person in the UK, simply ‘doesn’t support the introduction of these measures’.
He told MPs: ‘Over the past couple of weeks the Government’s credibility, whether it’s on Paterson or on the Christmas parties, has taken a hit.
‘Why should people at home, listening to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, do things that people working in No10 are not prepared to do?’
Fellow Tory Philip Davies criticised the ‘latest in a long line of arbitrary, unnecessary, socialist measures’ and suggested Mr Javid had ‘gone native’.
The Covid clampdown came just hours after the PM issued a rare apology over a leaked video that showed his former press secretary Allegra Stratton and other No10 aides appearing to laugh and joke about the alleged Christmas party during a mock press conference.
No 10 said that it was ‘categorically untrue’ to suggest the move to Plan B had been accelerated to divert attention from the disastrous coverage of alleged rule-breaking by the PM’s staff.