London Mayor Declares ‘Major Incident’ Omicron Case Surge

A major incident refers to an incident or situation that has a number of serious consequences that requires the enforcement of special arrangements by one or more emergency response agencies. “This is beyond the scope of business as usual, and is likely to involve serious loss, damage, disruption or risk to human life or welfare, essential services, the environment or national security,” the government said.

Coordination arrangements between critical public services will be further enhanced with the re-establishment of the Strategic Coordination Group, with a government representative that will enable London to gain further support to address the pressures facing the city.

Khan said in the statement, “The increase in the cases of the Omicron variant in our capital is extremely worrying, so we are once again declaring a major event for our city due to the threat of Kovid-19.” With the rapidly increasing number of cases and the resumption of COVID-19 patients in our hospitals, it has become a staple.”

The mayor first announced a major event on 8 January due to the rapid spread of COVID cases and its impact on the NHS. It ended on 26 February as the case count had plummeted.

The number of COVID-19 cases in London has risen sharply, with 65,525 new confirmed cases in the past seven days, and 26,418 cases in the last 24-hour period alone – the highest number since the start of the pandemic. In the past week, the number of Covid-19 patients in London hospitals has increased by 29%, government data shows.