One in two colds are COVID as Omicron cases surge

In Tim's last update before Christmas, he talks about the exponential rise in cases driven by Omicron, and how while that might sound worrying, he's got the data from the app so show that it might not be as bad as it first seems. He also advocates for a 7 day isolation period for positive PCR tests rather than 10 days in order to minimise disruption for key workers. This has fortunately now been confirmed, but at the time of recording had not yet been! More of you amazing contributors have flocked to the app since Omicron emerged and it’s given us the opportunity to look into unanswered questions about the variant, like how long symptoms last and severity, but we still need you to keep logging so we can analyse more data and track the spread. We’ll keep the updates coming over the festive period, and Dr. Claire Steves from King’s College London will step in for the next two weekly updates while Tim takes a well-deserved break. -- Sections -- 00:00 - Intro 00:55 - This weeks data 04:15 - Omicron prevalence 07:09 - International data 09:45 - Symptoms update 11:30 - Omicron severity comparison 12:56 - Cold and flu update 14:22 - Pingdemic update 15:48 - Conclusion Link to omicron blog and video: https://joinzoe.com/learn/new-omicron... For the website visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/​ For more localised data visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data ​ For new vaccine data map please visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#vaccin... ​​ The app is available to download from: https://api.covidradar.org/launch/ Join our newsletter to get the latest updates on ZOE's discoveries, from COVID to gut health, direct to your inbox by signing up here: http://eepurl.com/hlUh-L If you need subtitles, please click the option for subtitles at the bottom right of the video