Council health boss urges calm over spread of Omicron variant

A health boss in Birmingham has said the city council is monitoring the spread of the Omicron variant ‘very closely’ but urged calm and said people shouldn’t panic.

Cllr Paulette Hamilton (Lab, Holyhead), cabinet member for health and social care at Birmingham City Council, told BirminghamWorld that the council has plans in place should the variant spread quickly across the city, but said clearer guidance to the public is needed from the government.

She said: “I believe that the scientists, government, local authorities and and health partners all have to be clearer about the messages because we’re nearly two years in and if we’re not clear on the messages we will lose public support.

“We have had public health saying we shouldn’t be socialising and mixing as little as possible, but then we have the government saying you can carry on doing all of that as along as you take lateral flow tests regularly and wear masks - which I think they should have done a while back as we are still in a the middle of the pandemic.

“We just need make sure messaging is clear and is saying the same thing across the board - but do we need to panic? no -my fear is if we work people up now, when there is a reason to be concerned, they might ignore us.”

There are fears over the new “heavily mutated” Covid-19 variant found in South Africa, with the country being added to the UK’s ‘red list’.

The B.1.1.529 variant, officially named Omicron, was first found in the country and there are warnings that the new strain may be more transmissible than the Delta strain and current vaccines may be less effective against it - but early reports suggest that symptoms from the strain are ‘mild’.

The number of people in the UK infected by the Omicron coronavirus variant has risen to 32, according to the UK Health Security Agency - although no cases have been detected in the West Midlands so far.

‘More data is needed on variant’

Cllr Hamilton said it’s important to wait until scientists have gathered more data on the variant before making any decisions.

“As a council, we are monitoring the variant very closely. We are having regular meetings with regional and national people, so we are monitoring it closely at the moment,” she said.

“As a city we have all our plans in place from the earlier stages of the pandemic and if they do need to be enacted we do have ability to do so. We haven’t disbanded them, but just stepped them down.”

She added: “We are in constant talks with government and public health ensuring that we keep a eye on the numbers.”

She said it’s vital people get vaccinated as we enter the winter months.

“In Birmingham we absolutely believe people should be taking their vaccines, they should be taking their boosters as soon as they are offered, or if you are not offered, if there is availability to go into walk in centres, then go and have it.

“What the research is showing is that people who are double vaccinated and had their boosters are not the ones being hospitalised.”

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