Covid infections jumped by a tenth across the UK last week, according to another study that shows children are fueling the resurgence of Omicron.
According to the Daily Mail, King’s College London scientists estimate 160,000 people were falling ill with Covid every day in the week ending January 26, compared to 145,000 in its previous report.
Cases are now rising in every region, the report said.
The findings mirror other coronavirus surveillance studies and the Government’s data, which all illustrate how the Omicron wave stopped collapsing.
The data from the King’s team, who work alongside health firm ZOE, shows cases in children are fuelling the rise, with infections hitting the highest rate recorded since the pandemic began. And cases now appear to be spilling over into 35 to 55-year-olds.
Separate data from the UK Health Security Agency released mirrors the findings, with positive test results rising in youngsters and their parents’ age groups while remaining stable in other cohorts.
Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist and lead scientist for the study, said the bounce-back came ‘sooner than many expected’.
But he insisted it was ‘not surprising’ because the start of the school term has been the instigator of resurgences throughout the pandemic, with the highly-infectious virus then crossing over into their parents, school staff and the rest of the wider community.
Professor Spector said cases will ‘continue to stay high until spring’ due to Omicron’s high reinfection rate and the emergence of subvariant BA.2, which experts argue could become dominant within a month because it appears to be even more infectious than its ancestral strain.