Dec 14,2021:British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday reported the first known omicron death after saying the country faces a “tidal wave” of cases from the new variant that has shown a higher resistance to vaccines.
Long lines formed at vaccination centers across England after the news Monday, with Johnson also announcing booster shots would be available to all adults. The British government raised the country’s coronavirus threat level on Sunday, warning that the rapid spread of omicron “adds additional and rapidly increasing risk to the public and health care services.”
“I’m afraid it is now clear that two doses of vaccine are simply not enough to give the level of protection we all need,” Johnson said in an address to the U.K. announcing a new timeline for the country’s booster rollout.
With the spread of the omicron variant looming, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday told ABC News that preliminary data about omicron show the variant can “evade” some of the protection that vaccines offer but a booster dose “raises the level of protection high enough that it then does do well against the omicron.”
