that half of people with cold like symptoms actually have coronavirus. the number of nhs staff off work because of covid has risen by more than 50% in the past week in england to nearly 19,000. in london, the epicentre of the omicron outbreak, it s more than doubled to nearly 4,000. |the nhs workforce was already underj pressure before omicron came along, there s increased pressure, as we re seeing in many- workforces at the moment, especially if someone needs to isolate if they have a positive case. but some of the recent moves - we ve had, from moving from ten day to seven day isolation, - if you take tests in the last two days, i think all of this will help. but the ten day isolation rule is to remain in wales. the welsh government said it wanted to put the brakes on omicron as much as possible. scotland and northern ireland are also keeping ten day quarantine for now.
that half of people with cold like symptoms actually have coronavirus. the number of nhs staff off work because of covid has risen by more than 50% in the past week in england to nearly 19,000. in london, the epicentre of the omicron outbreak, it s more than doubled to nearly 4,000. |the nhs workforce was already underj pressure before omicron came along, there s increased pressure, as we re seeing in many- workforces at the moment, especially if someone needs to isolate if they have a positive case. but some of the recent moves - we ve had, from moving from ten day to seven day isolation, - if you take tests in the last two days, i think all of this will help. but the ten day isolation rule is to remain in wales. the welsh government said it wanted to put the brakes on omicron as much as possible. scotland and northern ireland are also keeping ten day quarantine for now.
authoritarian system. saleena wang, cnn, tokyo. and south africa, a top scientific expert says the country has past the peak of its omicron outbreak. you can see on the map when we bring that up, south africa is one of the few countries on the continent where cases are down compared to last week. they have fallening more than 20%. the head of the south african medical association says this fourth wave was steeper but much shorter than previous waves. hospital admissions and deaths have also been significantly lower. so for more on that encouraging statement, we re joined now from nairobi, kenya. good to see you, larry. many are taking comfort from this information. do experts there know why infections are suddenly falling? rosemary, the experts think this is because of two factors. one is that more people in the population have been infected.
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