of Britain omicron Official data showed today that the outbreak is no longer subsiding as fast.
Another 39,000 positive cases and 194 Covid deaths have been recorded across the UK, down just five per cent from the previous week.
And the number of infected people admitted to hospital each day is falling, with 1,015 admissions on Friday – just 2.6 percent fewer than seven days ago.
This coincides with the rise of the even more permeable Omicron subvariant BA.2, which health chiefs say is now dominant. Experts told MailOnline cases were still falling across the UK, but warned they ‘may not last much longer’ as the share of BA.2 infections continues to rise.
However, scientists have insisted that there is nothing to panic. Stress is behind almost all cases in Denmark, but it has had no effect on Covid hospitalizations and mortality.
The drop in testing numbers, which have dropped by a fifth in a week, also makes it difficult to understand the actual infection rate.
It comes less than a week after Boris Johnson lifted all remaining England restrictions on public transport with requirements to wear a face mask and isolate if infected.
Government scientists told lawmakers today that Number 10 did not do any modeling of how all legal COVID restrictions in the country would affect infection rates – but warned that it was “inevitable” that cases would rise.
Data from the UK Health Protection Agency (UKHSA) shows 39,000 Britons tested positive, a 5.2 per cent drop from the 41,130 cases detected last Tuesday.
The majority of cases, 26,711, were recorded in England, with 2,225 in Wales and 2,567 in Northern Ireland. Another 2,567 people tested positive in Scotland.
The actual scale of the infection is hard to explain, experts have warned.
Some 643,136 Covid test results were recorded yesterday, compared to more than 2 million at the height of the omicron wave.
But the positivity rate in England – the proportion of Covid tests that are positive – rose to 10.9 per cent last Tuesday, compared to 10.4 per cent a week ago for the latest data available to date.
Meanwhile, 1,015 infected people were admitted to hospitals across the UK on Friday. This figure is just 2.6 percent less than a week ago.
And 10,551 Covid-infected people were in hospitals across the UK as of 8am on Sunday, down 6.8 per cent in a week.
Meanwhile, another 194 deaths were recorded within 28 days of a positive test, taking the total since the start of the pandemic to 161,630.
Vaccination data shows that more than 91.5 per cent-12 in the UK now have at least one COVID vaccine, while 85.2 per cent are double-jabbed and 66.5 per cent have been promoted.
Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease specialist at the University of East Anglia (UEA), told MailOnline that interpreting daily infection data is challenging because the proportion of cases being picked up through testing is falling.
Professor Hunter said that while comparing daily case figures with the National Statistics Office’s estimates on actual infection rates, Covid tests picked up 45 percent of infections in early January. But by the second week of February, it came down to 25 per cent.
Professor Hunter said: ‘While infection numbers are probably still falling, BA.2 infections were still rising – at least a week ago – when the latest COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium data is available.
‘So overall I think cases are still falling but maybe not for long now that BA.2 is dominant and probably still rising.
‘However, I suspect that BA.2 may continue to grow for much longer. It is already growing much more slowly than it was a few weeks ago.’
UKHSA revealed that BA.2 was behind 52 per cent of all cases in the seven days to 20 February. The sub-version has completed a rapid rise to dominance just a month after it was first seen in the UK.
BA.2 has several new mutations as well as several mutations similar to Omicron that make it more transmissible.
But, unlike its parent, it has a distinct genetic quirk, which means it can be easily distinguished from the original oomicron without the need for genomic sequencing. UKHSA scientists use it to estimate the prevalence of BA.2.
It comes as Professor John Edmonds, a SAGE member and an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told lawmakers that the government did not ask its scientists to model the impact of relaxing Covid rules.
Mr Johnson last month rolled out Covid laws in England, including the requirement to self-isolate after testing positive.
Speaking to the All Party Parliamentary Group on the coronavirus, Professor Edmonds warned that it was ‘inevitable’ that this would result in an increase in infections.
But he said it was difficult to determine by how much, as there was no request from the government to model the result.
Professor Edmonds said he believed people would continue to stay at home after testing positive, but warned the end of free COVID tests from April would mean fewer people would know they were infected.
Professor Matt Keeling, a SAGE member and a modeler at the University of Warwick, warned lawmakers that although the virus is under control, “there is room for things to get much worse”.
If the public begins to mix at pre-pandemic levels, the R rate – the average number of people passing the virus on to an infected person – could rise to 2, he warned.