now on bbc news, tuesday in parliament. hello again and welcome to tuesday in parliament. in this programme: a lockdown warning for ministers: if you open up too fast, a lot more people die. a lot more people die. advice on what to do when that pandemic order of protective equipment doesn t arrive. will the minister commit to recovering public money from the companies which did not meet their contractual obligations? and experts say football s handling of head injuries is a shambles. we find that the risk of dementia is about four times higher than it should be. but first, england s chief medical officer, chris whitty, has warned that lifting the lockdown too quickly would lead to a substantial surge in covid infections. professor whitty told mps that would be dangerous and risk lives among the many vulnerable people not yet protected by the vaccine. the day after the full return of schools in england, he told the science and technology committee that despite vaccines there w
for asymptomatic infection. i think understand the logic. it s important for people to understand that the omicron variant, like previous variants, infects us initially in the upper airways. there s nothing about vaccination that prevents that happening. what s true, as time goes on and more of the population has been infected or vaccinated, is that our immune resistance against infection and against severity of symptoms is going up. one of the things authorities are clearly reacting to is the fact that while hospitalisation rates are going up relatively slowly, relative to case rates, case rates are climbing at a very high rate. so there is a pressure to react but also an awareness that very likely our immune systems are coming to our defence. it is true that we have increasing numbers of drugs and vaccines
variant, like previous variants, infects us initially in the upper airways. there s nothing about vaccination that prevents that happening. as time goes on and more of the population has been infected or vaccinated, our immune resistance against infection and against severity of symptoms is going up. one of the things authorities are clearly reacting to is the fact that while hospitalisation rates are going up relatively slowly, relative to case rates, case rates are climbing at a very high rate. so there is a pressure to react but also an awareness that very likely our immune systems are coming to our defence. it is true that we have increasing numbers of drugs and vaccines to defend ourselves but i think the immune system is the primary defence we have right now and that s arguing for a relaxation of the regulations by the american
general population, only 10% of individuals are unvaccinated but those individuals are disproportionately being admitted to icu. the greatest thing you can do to protect yourself against icu admission and hospital admission is to get vaccinated. here it shows why we are in such a good position in this country right now and why we have seen reductions in our hospitalisation compared to where we could have expected a month ago, where we see reductions in case numbers and falling case numbers in the country. this relates to our booster campaign and we have now got compared to comparable countries across europe and north america, the highest rate of boosters in the population overall. we can see other countries are rapidly trying to increase their booster campaign and we also know this is affecting their hospitalisation rates and cases in their population. the strongest defence we have against the omicron wave we are now experiencing and any
in the upper airways. there s nothing about vaccination that prevents that from happening. what s clearly true, as time goes on and more of the population has been infected or has been vaccinated, is that our immune resistance against infection and against severity of symptoms is going up. one of the things that the authorities are clearly reacting to is the fact that while hospitalisation rates are going up relatively slowly relative to case rates, case rates are climbing at a very high rate. and so, there s both a pressure to react, but also an awareness that very likely our immune systems are coming to our defence. it is true that we have increasing numbers of both drugs and vaccines to defend ourselves, but i think the immune system is the primary defence that we have right now and that s arguing for a relaxation of the regulations by the american authorities. i would also point out that the.