After criticism after criticism of the overnment for being too slow, someone has definitely pressed the turbo charge switch on covid protection. Even the journalists are taken by surprise!

So the latest position is that all adults, that is persons over 18 will now be entitled to a booster dose and immuno-suppressed individuals will even be able to go for a fourth dose.

Furthermore the gap between second and third doses will be reduced to three months from the recently announced five.

This is a major change in policy and clearly reflects growing concern at the possibility of the new Omicron variant becoming a serious issue. Already cases are starting to show up in the UK – as a health minister said this morning on television, we cannot stop it, merely hope to slow it down a bit.

Could we be forgiven for thinking that it is not just out of an abundance of caution that the vaccination programme is being accelerated so much, rather the real truth is an expectation of trouble to come and getting people jabbed as fast as possible is seen as the most practicable solution to slowing down the pace of spread?

All the statistics we are seeing at the moment are still based on the fact that the Delta variant is the dominant force at the moment so it will be interesting to see those graphs as the Omicron variant takes over, whether quickly or slowly. And with that, then there will be the observations as to whether it is more serious or not. At the moment, they claim not to know, so quickly have the experts jumped into action.

Today’s new cases in the UK amount to 42,583 bringing the seven day rollup up to 303,322 with deaths and patients admitted down a bit but it is a Monday so that is to be expected.

And to our photo of the day, a picture of one of those remarkable features created by nature itself – fact is certainly stranger at times than fiction.

Adrian Leopard     29-11-21

Photo Patrick Metzdorf