Covid: More restrictions a last resort, Sajid Javid says

Further Covid restrictions in England must be an "absolute last resort", Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said, despite rising case numbers in the UK.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr Javid said the UK must look to "live alongside" coronavirus in 2022.

The number of people in intensive care was not following the same trajectory as this time last year, he said.

But he warned there would be a big increase in the number of people needing NHS care in the next month.

On Friday UK daily Covid cases reached another record high of 189,846.

New Year's Eve celebrations have been scaled back across much of the UK as the more infectious Omicron variant continues to drive up cases.

Mr Javid said England had "welcomed in 2022 with some of the least restrictive measures in Europe".

He said: "Curbs on our freedom must be an absolute last resort and the British people rightly expect us to do everything in our power to avert them.

"Since I came into this role six months ago, I've also been acutely conscious of the enormous health, social and economic costs of lockdowns.

"So I've been determined that we must give ourselves the best chance of living alongside the virus and avoiding strict measures in the future."

But Mr Javid acknowledged the pandemic was "far from over".

It was "inevitable" there would be a big increase in Covid patients requiring NHS treatment over the next month, he said, because of the lag between infections and hospital admissions.

Friday's coronavirus figures showed daily hospital admissions were up to 1,915, as of 27 December, compared with 1,506 the previous day.

There was also a further 203 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

A leading statistician who advises the government said the UK's daily Covid-19 cases could be closer to 500,000 due to the testing system being overstretched and reinfections not being counted in the government data.

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge told the BBC: "This is a huge, unprecedented wave of infection and very daunting."

But he added that deaths were "not yet going up" and that the country could be "fairly optimistic" about avoiding the kind of pressures seen during the last winter wave.

England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam, who became household names during the Covid-19 pandemic, have been knighted.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, and Dr June Raine, head of the vaccines regulator MHRA, have both been made dames.

The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, who was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours list, is elevated to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.