Huge queues formed outside supermarkets including Tesco, butchers and cheesemongers in Bristol, Crawley and Hampshire today after Boris Johnson gave the green light for Christmas.
According to Government modelling, up to 2million people could catch Omicron per day this winter, which could push the UK into a de facto lockdown with so many isolating.
Omicron tightened its grip on the nation as the UK recorded 90,418 new infections on Saturday, as SAGE advisers warned cases could hit one million infections each day by December 25.