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...
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The app is available to download from: https://api.covidradar.org/launch/

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If you need subtitles, please click the option for subtitles at the bottom right of the video