Two weeks after the United Kingdom dropped its last remaining Covid-19 mitigation measure -- a requirement that people who test positive for the virus isolate for five days -- the country is seeing cases and hospitalizations climb once again.
Covid-19 cases were up 48% in the UK last week compared with the week before. Hospitalizations were up 17% over the same period.
The country's daily case rate -- about 55,000 a day -- is still less than a third of the Omicron peak, but cases are rising as fast as they were falling just two weeks earlier, when the country removed pandemic-related restrictions.
Daily cases are also rising in more than half of the countries in the European Union
the UK Health Security Agency said BA.2 had an 80% higher relative growth rate than the original Omicron strain |