BOOSTER SCRAMBLE AS OMICRON SURGES

THOUSANDS OF NEW LONDON CASES. SPREADING AT BREAKNECK SPEED

- Nicholas Cecil and Rachael Burford

LONDONERS raced to get booster jabs today as health chiefs warned that thousands of cases a day of the Omicron Covid-19 variant were now hitting the city.

There were long queues at St Thomas’ Hospital and Guy’s Hospital in central London to get a third dose, as well as at other walk-in centres around Britain. The NHS jabs booking website crashed for a second time since Boris Johnson last night ordered an unprecedented campaign to get millions of people boosted within weeks to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed by the disease or tougher restrictions being introduced in the new year. More than 700 military personnel are being deployed to help organise the booster campaign and to administer jabs.

There were reports of Londoners struggling to get jabs at smaller centres including pharmacies. Lateral flow home test kits became unavailable on the Government website, with people advised to “try again later” or to book a test site appointment instead. This morning Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned that Omicron is spreading at a rate that “we’ve never seen before”, with an estimated 40 per cent of Covid cases in London now being this variant. He said that Britain was in a “race” against the fast-spreading mutation to get far more of the population protected.