From the guardian live blog
Daily Covid hospital admissions in London reach highest daily figure since early February
In the i today Jane Merrick suggests that, if Covid hospital admissions in London remain below 400 by the end of the week, the government may decide not to impose fresh restrictions in England next week. (See 11.56am.) She wrote the article when the most recent figure for London admissions was 245, for Sunday.
According to today’s dashboard, the most recent daily figure (for Monday) is now 301. The previous Monday the figure was 169. The daily Covid hospital admission figure for London has not been this high since early February.
And the total number of Covid patients in hospital in London has now passed 2,000 for the first time this winter. It is 2,036 today. It has not been this high since the start of March. Until the first week of December the average daily figure was near the 1,000 mark, but in the last three weeks it has doubled.
London is being closely watched because the Omicron spike took off first here, and so it is assumd that what is happening in the capital will be replicated in other parts of the country.
But London also has a population with unusually low rates of vaccination. More than 30% of Londoners over the age of 12 have not yet had a first jab. Nationally the equivalent figure is 10%. That suggests London may turn out to be more of an outlier than a reliable indicator for how Omicron will drive up hospitalisation rates in the rest of the UK.