Officials have confirmed that Mr. Raab “misspoke” on both instances by miscalculating the numbers, and that ten individuals are presently in hospital with Omicron.
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, stated on Monday that there were ten people in hospital with the novel Omicron type. Dominic Raab initially stated that there were 250, but afterwards changed his mind and informed the BBC that there were just nine. Officials claim that there are still ten.
Raab’misspoke’ on Omicron data at the time. According to Dominic Raab of Sky News, there are presently ten persons in hospital with the Omicron version of COVID-19, not 250. The deputy prime minister then informed the BBC that nine persons with the variation were in hospital.
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After being questioned about the mistake, he accused another presenter of “ranting.” This comes as the government attempts to expand the booster immunization program. Mr Raab, who also serves as Justice Secretary, told Kay Burley earlier this morning that there are “a large number” of people in hospital with the variation, but he could not tell how many are on ventilators.
When pressed for specific figures, Mr. Raab said: “The most recent one I saw was in the low hundreds. I believe it was 250 the last time I checked, although the info is constantly updated.”
In the same hour, the deputy PM revised his figure for the number of people in hospital with Omicron down from 250 to nine during his appearance on BBC Breakfast.
“I know we’ve had one death,” he said. “I think we’ve got nine people who are in hospital with it.”
Officials later clarified that this was incorrect too, and there were in fact 10 people in hospital with the new variant, as Health Secretary Sajid Javid told Kay Burley yesterday.