By Tony O’Reilly-
The UK’s COVID alert level has been downgraded from three to two – the first time it has been that low. Level five is the highest.
The latest change news was recommended by the UK’s four chief medical officers, the Department of Health and Social Care said. The news also comes as the summer months wind down in preparation for winter.
The chief medical officers of the UK nations and the national medical director of the NHS in England have jointly recommended that the Covid alert level be moved down from level 3 amid falling cases. They said the Covid-19 wave of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 was “subsiding”.
Rates of Covid have decreased as have the number of severe cases needing hospital care, they added. However, they said further Covid surges were “likely” as they urged people to take up the offer of vaccination. The autumn booster campaign is due to start within days
A level two alert means that “COVID-19 is in general circulation, but direct healthcare pressures and transmission are declining or stable”.
Coronavirus deaths registered in England and Wales have fallen for the third week in a row, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The chief medical officers said while hospitals and the “wider health systems remain extremely busy overall”, the “summer BA 4 and BA 5 (both Omicron variants) wave is subsiding, and direct COVID severe illness is now a much smaller proportion of this”.
Rates of Covid illness was controversial throughout the winter of 2020 and a lot of 2021, as hospitals were accused of exaggerating the levels of hospitalisations , adding patients who had tested positive for the virus to the hospitalisation statistics, but who had been admitted to hospital for other illnesses.
There were suspicions that the exaggerations were taking place to justify calls for lockdowns during the height of the pandemic, and to encourage the British public to get vaccinated in numbers to protect the public, but also for those profiting from the vaccination programme.
Nhs representatives have previously said that all exaggerations of hospitalisations connected to the virus were due to honest misrepresentations from hospital, not intended to mislead the public.