LONDON, December 18. /TASS/: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan on Saturday said he declared a "major incident" in the city due to a surge of Omicron cases.
"I have taken the decision, along with our partners, to declare a major incident," the mayor said on Sky News television.
He said hospital admissions and staff absences were going up "by massive levels" and Omicron was the dominant variant. Still, he didn’t announce any new measures.
Last time a major incident was declared was on January 8 amid the spread of the coronavirus’s Alfa variant.
The latest government data showed the number of patients in hospitals across London on December 17 was up more than 28% compared with a week earlier.
There are about 1,500 COVID-19 patients in London hospitals, while about 7,600 have been hospitalized in the entire UK.
Khan said Londoners should get both vaccines and the booster and said there soon will be more places offering COVID-19 vaccines.
He expressed hope that the UK government to provide financial support for businesses that are hardest hit by the pandemic.
The UK has registered almost 25,000 Omicron cases, up by about 10,000 from a day earlier.
The World Health Organization on November 26 assigned the Greek letter Omicron to coronavirus variant В.1.1.529 that was discovered in southern Africa. The WHO stated the variant has a large number of mutations, some of which cause concern. The variant has been detected in about 80 countries including Russia.
