Six more people have died with Omicron Covid and another 20 have been admitted to hospital.

It brings the total number of deaths in England of people with the new variant to seven, the UK Health Security Agency said.

Hospital admissions for people with confirmed or suspected Omicron also rose to 85, up from 65.

And there have been an additional 10,059 confirmed cases across the UK, bringing the total to 24,968.

In total, there have been 90,418 Covid cases recorded in the latest update, and another 125 deaths.

The rapid spread of the variant has prompted calls for a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown after Christmas, which would ban people of different households from mixing indoors.

Officials are said to be drawing up the plans which could also restrict pubs and hospitality businesses to serving outdoors.

But a leading Government adviser, Sage member Stephen Reicher, said more action is needed now as it’s clear ‘Plan B’ measures are not going to be enough.

Rules of face masks, working from home and daily tests for contact have been brought in in recent weeks – but cases numbers are still surging quicker than they have done throughout the whole pandemic.

Speaking to Times Radio in a personal capacity, Prof Reicher said: ‘The only way really, or at least the most effective way, we can have an immediate effect is to decrease the number of contacts we have.

‘In many ways, the most effective way of diminishing contact is to have a circuit-breaker.

‘Now, you could have it after Christmas, the problem is after Christmas it’s probably too late, it’s probably by then we will have had a huge surge of infections with all the impact upon society.

‘When people say “look, we don’t want to close down”, of course, we don’t want to close down. But the problem is at the moment, things are closing down anyway, because of the spread of infection. So I think we need to act now.’

London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has declared a ‘major incident’ in the capital, which has become the epicentre of the latest wave.

He said hospitals are operating at full capacity and other key services are struggling with staff absences.

It’s the first time London has faced this situation since the last winter coronavirus wave. 

The capital has seen 65,525 new confirmed cases in the past seven days and 26,418 cases were reported in the last 24 hour period alone, a new record.

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