business travelers from the u. k. this as the british government says it's facing a tidal wave of new infections fuel by omicron. the u. k reported a leap of 72 percent and the number of daily cases compared to the week before. and over $82000.00 cases per day. it's more than any time during the pandemic. g, w correspondent, charlotte chelsea. toll reports from london. ah, mister cheer on the streets of london. once again bringing hollow, shops and hospitality may all be open. christmas party still allowed to go ahead as planned, but covert is casting its dark shadow as the days ahead. is experts warm, the omicron tidal wave is coming and it's coming at a phenomenal pace. what we know is that it reproduces very, very fast. um, a week ago, a school, so we said it come reproduces every $23.00 days or 3 times a week. i'm putting in very simply that means in one week you get 8 times as many

sections 2 weeks, 64 times as many, 3 weeks, 512 times as many says coming at us like an express train. you k is already recording record cove cases with omicron. now the dominant variance here in london resisting calls from some for further restrictions. the government's focusing instead on its booster campaign, resulting in lengthy queues at vaccine sites across the country. obviously though, the kron is growing so rapidly london, and we just wanted to get in as quickly as possible. so many people i thought of getting covered again from last week out of the office policy 1460 and then go cove . it clearly all mc on is really spreading quickly. it's very relevant or very important for me to come her to learning for in 5 hours. not that i want to make an issue of it. brother, i live with my mother and father who of, in their ages. i want to ideally get it done for i went to go and see relatives and people over christmas. i can't feel my toes there,

but it's okay. it's okay. the government's throwing the doors open to every adult in england to get boosted by the end of the year. they're hoping to offer up to a 1000000 jams a day is early data suggests the 3rd vaccine is key to combating omicron. this is a massive undertaking for the health service they're being asked for another major, maxine push to try and vent hospitals like this one from being overwhelmed with our concerns. it won't be enough. as people here lie, not for that boosters. there are already people in hospital with omicron hospitalizations, all climbing and one person's confirmed to have died with omicron. while it's not yet clear how severe the very intense, the sheer number of cases alone could prove overwhelming. in the shadow of this vaccine center, a reminder of what's at stake, a memorial wall commemorating the 10s of thousands of lives lost to cove it. and it's with the pain and sacrifice of the past. that this weary nation is now facing

the threat of another worrying winter to come more for more on the situation in the u. k. let's talk to julian tang a clinical ver ologist at the university of leicester julian. i thank you for joining us. the situation in the u. k is already bad, but recent models from the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine indicate it's about to get a lot worse. therefore, casting between $2575000.00 from overcome by the end of april. what will the coming month look like for the u. k? yes, so some questions about those models and they have been wrong before arithmetic north . that's in cases that one of the key things about the model is that they're trying to model the severity of illness. from, from neutralization studies dark in the lab as well. we know from previous attempts to rows of illnesses, very hot model, and that way that i suspect that the number infections may be close to the mark

with the impossible sections maybe less than the most predicts. in the most pessimistic scenario, even in the most optimistic scenario, where maybe not as many hospitalization, so just to wait and see. and those we know that these are responses are also very important in keeping people as a hospital and have more severe disease. and teeth responses are not really correlated in the model of the many fixed antibody utilization that results. but no matter what way you really look at this, the u. k, the rest of the world is facing more cases. more hospitalizations, is that avoidable and the u. k. now is difficult as if left it very long was you stop, see the peak of these cases now use irma chrome or if it is actually the horses bolted. so even though you impose restrictions, now, there are a lot of viruses, lot people out there who are seeing the on con, though very, and across the population. knuckles, delta hasn't gone away either. the restrictions will reduce both the variance,

answers of infections and death and hospitalization. and death, hopefully, but now it's very late on to do this. and when christmas new year already upon us, this as low as asians now will have increased even as we speak. you know, even behind closed doors, we've seen in recent days that countries like the netherlands returning to locked down. do you think leisure is? that's rector. a potential lockdown are coming in the u. k. so from a purely virus point of view, i think that's probably what's needed if they wanted to achieve that goal of actually reducing the spread of omicron and not just for 2 weeks or so i've said already, i think for at least 4 to 6, we're gonna have to use that kind of measure to really lock down the virus. but then of course, if the concert ha, slunk hastily, hospitality industry and the economy in a, in a wider sense sort of social, psychological welfare. so as can be really hard to struggle balance between that, those 2 extremes, one of the challenges here seems to be that we don't know

a lot about on market right now. there's still a lot of unanswered questions about how deadly it is. or how can governments, including the government and the u. k. draft health policy is when our understanding of this very and is still quite limited. so this, the issue of the precautionary approach in effect control, if you're not sure about how severe the virus is, how fast it spreads, you put in place measures that will cover those eventualities. even at the most pessimistic level, though, of course, that has a knock in effect for him education or society and economy. but if you poorly look and control the virus or some of the sockets, asian cultures have done very well as, as a candidate restriction of measures that you need to impose early on. and then you can reap the benefits of that later on. that when you open up was of ours is down to, you know, virtually 0 when the moment the u. k. and other european countries the and it was just far too high for that. so what you're looking for as a mitigation, that after that peak and hopefully something we can live with, as well as you know,

overwhelming your local health services. you mentioned there that net effective measures we've seen in, in south either asian countries. what exactly did you mean by that? can you elaborate a bit on what those have been? yes, so rather than getting with pandemic when they weren't sure about the viruses, well, the original hands train, the went to universal masking and forced isolation crime, scene of effects and contacts. there will be had security tax on, on risk ankles and mobile phone apps to track. they've been what he broke, those isolation, quarantine orders that even new friends they had to be made. it won't stay at home and they need a written permission slip. so to leave the house for essential business that, that kind of measure that did actually work very well to stem the tide of carrot in the service wave. now has more people vaccinated and hung had left in unity than the risk of severe disease. and death is much less at moments, but if you want to reduce the risk of overwhelming the health care service because

they're dealing with the things that in the winter winter months that the you may need some kind of locked down or at least something similar to restrict those numbers that even further that given that already 80000. now. so julian taking the long view here many in europe had really helped us christmas would be different than the last. it doesn't appear that that's going to be happening. do you see a risk and this pattern every winter, just repeating itself and from now on there's a list put a lot to listing some of my colleagues. i think this versus no doubt into the human population. the number of spike person mutations, though rapid spread with less severity, from data to we had to south africa and also so early they to know from hong kong and also chambers suggest that the vice wrecked gets better in the upper or lower asperity track. and these are all changes i'd expect to see for a virus, but better adapt his human population host over next few years. i think what garcia's and a mother marta from the vice on my spread more rapidly. but for which most you can

wait on the vaccination. that is julian tang, a clinical neurologist at the university of lester. thanks so much for analysis. you now it's your turn. here's of your question for our science correspondent derek williams. oh my husband was vaccinated then 2 weeks later tested positive for covered 19 could that be due to the vaccine? oh no, but depending on what kind of test he took for different reasons, there are basically 2 different types of diagnostics. the most accurate is called a polymerase chain reaction or a p c r test. now, it works my amplifying tiny amounts of sars, covey, two's genetic material in a sample, up to levels where it can be detected exactly why vaccines can't cause a positive pcr result is complicated scientifically. but more or less comes down to

the fact that most of the currently approved vaccines don't use a full version of the real virus to kick start an immune response. they instead contain no short stretches of genetic material that, that don't replicate that the grade fast and cells and that aren't detected or amplified by pcr. the 2nd class of detection diagnostics called androgen tests, they work by revealing the presence of certain proteins that are specific to sars covey to they're cheaper and faster, but also less accurate than p c r. because some vaccines cause your body to produce the corona, virus spike protein to, to kick, start your immune response to the pathogen. it doesn't seem impossible that an antigen test which detects proteins, might be confused by that. however,

to avoid any confusion, most commercial antigen tests are not designed to detect spike protein, but other corona virus pro. and in addition, vaccines are injected into the arm, but detection tests, they swab the nose or the throat, the cells, there are not the ones producing spike proteins after vaccination, so long and short vaccines don't cause coven 19 tests to turn up positive on the presence of the virus does thanks for watching. ah ah, with

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