In Great Britain and Denmark, the Omikron variant seems to be expanding particularly rapidly at the moment, which has thrown the government in London back into a hectic crisis mode.

Their response consists of an accelerated vaccination booster campaign and new restrictions on social life that also cast a shadow on the economic recovery.

Philip Plickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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According to estimates by the UK Health Security Agency, the number of new infections caused by Omikron is said to have climbed to 200,000 - but most of them are completely without symptoms.

That would be a huge number of unreported cases compared to the officially reported positive Covid 19 tests, which so far were a third of them.

Health Minister Sajid Javid adopted the number 200,000.

According to statements from parliamentary circles in front of Tory MPs, the chief scientific advisor Chris Whitty designed an "apocalyptic" scenario about the increase in the corona numbers during the Christmas season.

Nevertheless, the biggest Tory revolt of his term of office to date rose against Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Almost 100 Conservative MPs voted against the legislative package with new restrictions on Tuesday evening.

24 million Britons have been boosted

The new measures adopted include the obligation to wear a mask in retail stores and on public transport, the introduction of a vaccination pass for major events with more than 500 participants and the general advice on working from home instead of working in the office. Many Tories are allergic to the vaccination certificate in particular. It was only because of the votes of the Labor opposition that the laws received a large majority.

There is cross-party support for the vaccination booster campaign, for which Johnson has promised a year-end spurt. 24 million of the approximately 66 million inhabitants on the island have already received the third dose of vaccine. The prime minister said the goal is now to have one million vaccinations a day. By the New Year, "everyone over 18 in England should get their booster," said Johnson. It later became clear that the chance relates to registering for the vaccination appointment, the booster program will actually last until February or longer. The actual average of the third vaccinations is approaching half a million per day - with a clear upward trend. For comparison: in Germany a little more than a quarter of the people - specifically 21.5 million - have received a booster vaccination.Almost a million doses were vaccinated on Tuesday.

In any case, the demand in Great Britain is enormous, at times the website of the NHS health service collapsed for registrations. Unlike in Germany, there are no reports of major shortages of vaccine, but long queues form at many immediate vaccination stations where you can get the syringe without registering. But after two hours you can do it, the NHS is currently demonstrating a high level of efficiency. For the third vaccination, almost only Pfizer / Biontech or Moderna is used, Astra-Zeneca hardly because it is less effective. The British vaccine from Oxford, once proudly seen, is mostly exported to developing countries.

The British health system NHS is particularly groaning in the Corona period, but it is not collapsing. Despite the suspected extremely high number of new infections, the number of hospital admissions is still comparatively moderate. In the middle of the week, 850 corona patients came to the hospital, the curve has even fallen a little since November. This is attributed to the successful early vaccination campaign and the already quite high immunization of the population due to high infection rates between 30,000 and 50,000 per day since "Freedom Day" in mid-July. The number of deaths of patients “with corona” is also moderate, especially when measured against the previous waves. There is little sense of panic about Omikron in the population. A significant proportion of passengers on public transport continue to travel without a mask.

For the economy, Omikron means a damper that destroys their lofty hopes for a strong recovery. The travel and flight industry is complaining about the new test and quarantine obligations, and the first airlines are calling for government aid again. Since last week, when Johnson announced the "Plan B" for Omikron, consumer sentiment indicators have fallen somewhat, according to Bank of America economists. The industry association CBI still believes in a good 5 percent economic growth in the next year, the Deutsche Bank has lowered its forecast for Great Britain for 2022 to only 3.5 percent.

But other data look good: Unemployment has fallen to 4.2 percent, the island is almost back to full employment mode before the Corona crisis.

Many companies are desperately looking for employees, with more than a million vacancies.

Starting salaries and bonuses increase significantly, most recently by 5 percent.

However, after deducting inflation, there is hardly any real profit.

On Wednesday, the statistics office announced that the rate of inflation had already climbed to 5.2 percent.

That makes the upcoming meeting of the central bank on Thursday particularly exciting.

The question is whether the Bank of England will dare tighten monetary policy for the first time by raising interest rates.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund recently called on them not to remain inactive.