Thread by @thetimes

Boris Johnson has tonight announced that:

⚪ Facemasks are to be made compulsory again in shops and on public transport

⚪ Anyone travelling to the UK will be required to take a PCR test and self-isolate until they have received a negative result thetimes.co.uk/article/compul…

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has also been asked to extend booster jabs to those aged between 18 and 39

The JVCI has further been asked to reduce the gap between second and third jabs to five months instead of six

On Friday, the UK placed South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini on the red list

Today Sajid Javid announced that Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia would be added

Boris Johnson has also announced that anyone who comes into contact with someone infected with the Omicron variant of the virus will have to self-isolate for 10 days regardless of their vaccination status thetimes.co.uk/article/compul…

Now that Omicron is here, how serious is it?

In truth, it is too early to tell. Worries about transmissibility seem justified — the rapid spike in cases in Gauteng, and its rapid travel around the world, suggest it can spread incredibly quickly thetimes.co.uk/article/omicro…

Perhaps a bigger worry is whether it will evade our vaccines. That is harder to tell

This is a theoretical risk and we will not know the impact until scientists have properly assessed the variant against antibodies and vaccines

There are reasons to be hopeful

The director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, believes the existing jabs will cope against the new variant, pointing out that although there are a lot of mutations, most are in similar regions seen in other variants so far

Even if the new variant manages to sidestep the antibodies produced by the vaccine, it is unlikely to escape our immunity altogether. T-cells, for example, are far less specific than antibodies, so immunity is unlikely to be eradicated completely

Booster jabs will also help

We are in for a nervous few weeks, yet again, while we see how far and fast the variant spreads through the British population and what impact it has along the way

But our defences are now primed

We can also put our trust in science to come to the rescue

On Friday night — just three days after scientists in Botswana published the genetic sequence for the new virus — Moderna announced it was already preparing an Omicron-specific booster vaccine
thetimes.co.uk/article/omicro…