By Alisha Samuel, Chibueze Oyo and Bianca Jashnani
A new variant of coronavirus, Omicron, emerged in Botswana, Southern Africa on 26th November. The World Health Organisation identified the variant B.1.1.529 as a “variant of concern“.
On Saturday, the UK Health Security Agency confirmed that two cases of Omicron had been discovered in the UK. But are people in the Holloway Road worried?
Carmen Chlw, 30, a pharmacist at Atkins Pharmacy on Holloway Road, said that last year was crazy as they weren’t prepared for the pandemic. She had to work 12 hours a day and her colleague had to had to work as security as there were long queues and they had to maintain social distancing. She also had to deal with “aggressive and racist” people, she said.
Omicron is “probably more infectious, but we don’t know if it’s going to cause more people to die or it will become like a normal flu, so we’ll just have to wait and see,” she said.
“With the news about the new variant, we’re still telling people to wear a mask if they come in, but there are people that refuse and we can’t do anything about it, we just have to make sure we are protected,” she added.
According to WHO, it is unclear if the variant is more easily spread between people compared to the other variants but there has been a spike in areas of South Africa. It is also not sure that if Omicron is more severe compared to the other variants.
Stopping the spread
From the 30th November Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced mandatory face coverings must be worn in shops and on public transport to help combat the Omicron variant.
“Unfortunately, we will be restricting customers once again. We will have to reinforce social distancing in shops including social distancing floor signs and being very adamant about face covering in our shop,” says Nadia, a part-time worker at Holloway Road Post Office who did not give her surname.
The uncertainty of the new variant has caused companies to revaluate their business policies. Last year, businesses that were able, decided to move their operations online in the wake of the pandemic.
Due to the nature of their business, Nadia said “We can’t tell our customers that we are moving to an online approach of doing things like other businesses have, we have key workers that come into the post office so the branch needs to physically be open.”
Though not everyone is confident with the government’s approach in handling the virus she said: “I’m 50/50 when it comes to government confidence. My uncle passed away during the pandemic, but we weren’t able to see him due to the COVID-19 restrictions so it was very weird.”
Unclear what will happen
Funeral arranger Liam Giles, 25 at Co-op Funeralcare in Holloway said funerals may have to take a different approach to families, seeing the numbers are not currently as high as they have been. “I won’t be as strict since you can’t cut out the quality of life, as you could lose family at any time.”
He added that it’s unclear what will happen with the new variant, and said that from his experience, the more a virus mutates the less dangerous it becomes. But he added that it’s early days.
“It might be nothing more than a common cold,” he said, adding that he had to “adapt every quickly last time round in the first peak, [so] we are fully prepared for what might come again. However, we are not seeing the same amount of numbers compared to last year. We are hoping we don’t have to come to that again.”
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