I welcome you both. Ali, to you first. U. S. Officials, confirming americans are among the dead. But, what do we know of any specifics, around those statistics, this hour . Yeah alex, this is something that we heard, first mention by Secretary Of State Antony Blinken this morning, when he said that u. S. Officials were working overtime, to confirm reports that americans were among those killed. Since these attacks began yesterday, as well as reports that americans, were among those taken hostage, into gaza, by hamas militants. And tonight, we have a new quote from a National Security council spokesperson. Confirming that the deaths of several u. S. Citizens since this attack began, but also on these reports of americans being taken hostage. They would only confirm that there are americans, quote, Unaccounted For. They say in a statement, quote, we are aware of reports of unaccounted american u. S. Citizens, and we are working to confirm, we are closely monitoring information of hostage
because if you see 2,000 omicron admissions today plus 700 from delta, then you get to the 3,000 or nearly 4,000 we saw at the peak in january and these are a lot of figures but they are important because it s not so much infections from coronavirus that policymakers and the government are concerned about, it is that impact on the nhs and on hospital admissions which is the most important thing. i was going to go on to say that they say in the minutes because it is a key thing to pick out, given the rapid increase, decision makers will need to consider urgently which measures to consider urgently which measures to introduce to slow the growth of infections if the aim is to pressure on the nhs so reading between the lines, what they are saying is, extra restrictions might be needed, so we have ministers meeting on this this afternoon and we could have an announcement we think for england as soon as this afternoon on this. they are talking about these plan b measures for