Some scientists and health experts in the british medical journal have suggested that alongside a global vaccine policy, we should be normalizing other public health measures. What do you make of this? It's something that some of the sientists advising government have been saying throughout but i'm not sure their voices have been heard strongly enough. We should really have been putting way more effort into making places covid safe, rather than having really strict lockdowns. And it would be a real shame if we don't learn the lessons from the past two years and ventilation, mask wearing and hygiene,. i think it would be absolutely sensible to continue those, at least through the winters as a standard thing we
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