Boris Johnson did not impose fresh restrictions to curb the spread of Omicron, which scientists said was too late to have an impact on the epidemic.
It's too late to know what impact the restrictions would have had if they'd been in place earlier. Paul Hunter is a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia.
The prime minister said after a cabinet meeting that he would not be introducing any further Covid restrictions.
He said that the data on the hospitalisation rate for those with the Omicron variant would be kept under constant review.
With Omicron infections doubling within 48 hours in most regions of the UK, the country may already have reached a ceiling where the rate of growth begins to fall and case numbers stop growing.
