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Dr William Hanage is a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard and the co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics

Everyone wants to believe Omicron is milder. I would like it to be milder myself, but I am very careful to not allow what I want to colour the way I interpret the data.

Christina Pagel is director of UCL’s Clinical Operational Research Unit, which applies advanced analytical methods to problems in healthcare.

We can’t wait for hospitalisations to rise – England needs a circuit breaker now

The question now is not whether Omicron will be bad for the NHS, but whether it will be just dreadful or catastrophic

NHS staff are exhausted. They have been working flat out for almost two years. For some of that time they had to struggle with rising numbers of seriously ill patients with Covid-19. When each wave subsided, they turned to the backlog of cases that had built up in the meantime – this enormous backlog started before the pandemic and numbers almost 6 million people. Meanwhile, Covid patients still make up about a quarter of occupied critical care beds.

With a variant that is doubling every two days that gives us only a two-day advantage. Whatever the eventual percentage of people with Omicron who will need NHS care, the absolute number seeking care will also double every two days.

Because it takes seven to 14 days from infection to needing hospital, this rapid increase in demand for NHS services will not be seen immediately – probably not until after Christmas – but it will happen.

The second risk comes from only focusing on the numbers of patients alone and not staff capacity. It is very likely that staff absences due to infection will also have a severe impact.