There are people in hospital who have tested positive for the new Omicron Covid strain, the education secretary has confirmed.

Nadhim Zahawi has not said whether the infection was the primary cause of the reason for hospitalisation or what the vaccination status of the patients were.

Warning that Omicron ‘will be the dominant variant in the UK and in the world’, the minister said even if the strain turns out to be milder, it could result in tens of thousands of hospitalisations.

H told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme that Omicron was ‘so infectious that it will dominate and exponentially grow’.

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He said: ‘Let’s do a mathematic exercise for a second. You get to a million infections by say the end of December – 1% is 10,000 severe infections that could be in hospital.

‘Three days later it is two million, three days later it is four million. Three days beyond that it is eight million.

‘That is the risk, that even if it is milder, say 50% milder than Delta, then the numbers are huge – it is a small percentage of a very large population.

‘That is the big difference. The reason we are taking these proportionate, I think precautionary measures – the most significant thing, scientists tell us, is the work from home, that has the greatest impact on slowing down Omicron, hence why we’ve had to take these measures.’

He added: ‘This is going to be a national endeavour to boost the nation as quickly as possible so we can control Omicron and bring back that equilibrium that we had with the virus, as we continue to protect the economy and of course on that journey towards endemic from pandemic status.’

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