Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said mandatory mask-wearing will return to shops and public transport on Tuesday, as he told families to plan for Christmas “as normal” despite new rules to combat the Omicron coronavirus variant.
He said on Sunday it was “nowhere near” time to reintroduce social distancing rules and work-from-home guidance, despite a raft of precautionary measures being reintroduced to tackle the concerning strain of Covid-19.
Passengers arriving in the UK have been told that from Tuesday morning they will have to take a PCR test for Covid-19, with the expectation they will have to self-isolate until they test negative.
All contacts with a suspected case of Omicron will have to isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status, amid concerns that existing jabs will be less effective against the strain, which is believed to spread rapidly.
Javid said the situation was ‘nowhere near’ the need to reintroduce social distancing rules and work-from-home guidance, even though SAGE had said that the reintorduction of working from home is likely to have the greatest individual impact on transmission.. but you’ve ruled it out.
However, he told Marr that’s their job to which Marr replied ‘and it’s your job to ignore it.”
He indicated that economic reasons, among others, were a key factor in not bringing back work from home advice.
However, in Scotland they are already advising people to work from home if they can.
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