NHS braced as COVID-19 cases spike across Britain

The United Kingdom's National Health Service is bracing for a massive spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations triggered by changes in behavior and new strains of the novel coronavirus.

The flare-up has already begun, the UK Health Security Agency said, with the latest data showing COVID-19 cases shot up by 32 percent in England in a single week.

But Jenny Harries, the organization's chief executive, told the BBC the worst may be yet to come.

"It doesn't look as though that wave has finished yet," she said. "So, we would anticipate that hospital cases will rise."

But, in spite of a doubling in hospital admissions during June that took the number of beds occupied by COVID-19 patients to 9,000 by the end of the month, Harries urged people not to panic and to "go about their normal lives".

The Office for National Statistics, or ONS, told a similar story, registering 50,000 new cases last week.

The ONS said the jump was driven by the emergence of two fast-spreading Omicron subvariants－BA.4 and BA.5, which have had additional opportunities to spread as many people have relaxed their guard and returned to the workplace and crowded summer events.

The UK is currently thought to have around 2.3 million people carrying the coronavirus, which equates to around 1 in 30 people.

Harries said it is also likely current vaccines are not working as well on the new strains as they did on previous strains.

"For this particular wave, we have some evidence there may be some slight reduction of the effectiveness of vaccines on variants," she told the broadcaster.

But she said health agencies still believe the UK's jabs should ensure the "majority of people" will be "safe from severe disease and out of hospital".

'Bumpy ride'

The fact that the UK no longer conducts widespread testing for COVID-19 and does not require people who have the disease to self-isolate means it will largely spread unchecked.

The Guardian reported that health chiefs are therefore braced for a "bumpy ride" during the coming months as the flare-up overlaps with an anticipated early start to the winter flu season.

Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, told the paper: "The policy of living with COVID does not mean COVID has gone away. The latest data shows we cannot afford to be complacent."

The UK's most deadly wave of the pandemic hit in January 2021, when the Alpha variant sent more than 4,000 people a day to hospital.