Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the potential increase in covid-19 cases of all variants in England over the next month.

The University of Warwick and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have undertaken modelling of the estimated levels of all variants in England in the next month. This predicts that cases of COVID-19 will decrease throughout January, to a level similar to that seen in November 2021.

Omicron is the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United Kingdom. For those cases which have the relevant genetic test, 93% are consistent with the Omicron variant. With no new variants currently circulated widely elsewhere in the world, the risk of a new variant becoming dominant in the next month is very low.