Is This What We've Been Seeing?

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Im madeline finley, and this is sides weekly to catch up on what's been happening with omacron. I spoke to guardian science editor ean sample well een. We've certainly seen a massive rising cases as predicted. Mean, the uk. Broke another pandemic record this week. And hospial tions are rising steeply too on the back of those. So far we've seen the virus largely spreading younger age groups too. What is yet to be seen is what will happen in the older age groups.

On Wednesday, 194,747 daily confirmed Covid cases were reported for the whole of the UK. But this doesn’t include all the people who have caught the virus for the second, or even third time. In fact, official figures for England, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t include those who have had Covid before, despite warnings from scientists that up to 15% of Omicron cases could be reinfections. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample about why reinfections are so high for Omicron, what these cases could tell us, and how it could affect public health measures in the future. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod