The Times - UK (2022-02-03)

the times | Thursday February 3 2022 2GM 19

News

The great return to the workplace ap-

pears to have stalled with traffic levels

well below even pre-Omicron levels.

Car usage has returned to an average

of 86 per cent on weekdays since the

government dropped its work from

home guidance on January 20.

The number of motorists on the

roads bounced back to 97 per cent of

pre-pandemic levels in September last

year as children returned to the class-

room and employers urged workers to

return to their desks.

They remained high until mid-

December when Boris Johnson an-

nounced a return to home working as

Omicron spread through the country.

That advice has been scrapped but

numbers have not recovered to the

autumn levels.

Jack Cousens, the AA’s head of roads

policy, said: “It is beginning to look like

car travel will settle close to 10 per cent

below pre-pandemic levels, almost its

own version of long Covid. With more

employers allowing hybrid working,

the shape of traffic has changed too

with quieter morning and evening rush

hours. The legacy of Covid may be that

it got drivers into habits that will en-

dure, such as online shopping.”

Rail passenger numbers have taken

the biggest hit among commuters and

recovery remains sluggish. While the

figures have climbed to 55 per cent of

pre-pandemic levels since work-from-

home guidance was dropped last

month, they are still down about 10 per

cent compared with the autumn.

Cousens suggested that car travel

had bounced back faster than other

modes of public transport because it

was considered a safer way to avoid

Covid than mixing with other commut-

ers. He claimed that car use could

decline further in the long run as the

pandemic receded to an epidemic and

home working was more accepted.

“As more commuters and other trav-

ellers return to trains and buses, car

travel may decline further,” Cousens

said. “Combine this with people’s work-

ing patterns changing, including work-

ing from home, and I imagine car travel

will eventually either stick at 10 per cent

below pre-pandemic or potentially

even less.” At the height of the first

lockdown car travel fell to about 30 per

cent of pre-pandemic levels, while rail

passenger numbers tumbled to 4 per

cent.

Many employers are struggling to

convince their staff to return to their

desks. A recent survey by Slack, the

messaging service, found that one in six

white-collar workers wanted to change

jobs because they were being forced to

return to the office.

Senior rail sources have warned of

possible issues with overcrowding if

workers were to swarm back to offices.

Train operators slashed their time-

tables at the start of the pandemic.

While more trains are now operating,

the number of services remains well

down on two years ago.

“We are certainly not witnessing a

‘surge’ in people heading back to the

office,” one insider said.

“It is more of a trickle and in many

ways that is a relief at the moment

still shed virus particles

they could improve our understanding

of the virus and speed up the testing of

vaccines, but they were delayed by

ethical concerns. The findings of this

study, carried out in the UK and pub-

lished before peer review, validate the

decision to go ahead, its authors argue.

The study involved exposing 36

healthy volunteers to a small amount of

virus, equivalent to inhaling a single

droplet. Even at this low dose, half of

those involved became infected, pro-

ducing detectable virus themselves

48 hours later. The amount of virus

people made did not seem to be obvious-

ly correlated to symptoms.

Normally, the early stages of infec-

tion are hard to study, because people

have to develop symptoms before they

get a test. The work was carried out

using the earliest strains of the virus,

which means that some of the insights

may no longer apply. The researchers

now hope to repeat it in other strains.

shaped like lanterns designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus

News

Low traffic shows workers

prefer to remain at home

Ben Clatworthy

Transport Correspondent

because the number of services was

already reduced before Omicron.”

Virtually all rail operators were

forced to further cut their timetables

last month because of the high number

of cases and staff absence.

Overall, services are operating at

about 78 per cent of what they were

before the pandemic, with many popu-

lar intercity and commuter routes hit

much harder.

Operators are braced for complaints

as passenger numbers recover and

questions are raised about their failure

to restore a full service.

They point out that the railways can

be economically viable only if the

service is busy. At present the network

is running 17,000 trains a day but with

enough passengers to fill about 11,500.

Before the pandemic more than 21,

services were running on an average

day.

The railways have been effectively

nationalised since the first lockdown,

although a £16 billion emergency bail-

out to keep trains running is starting to

be wound down.

Sources said that the Department for

Transport had told the rail industry to

cut costs by 10 per cent for the financial

year starting in April, which will lead to

fewer trains on the tracks.

Rail bosses are working on the as-

sumption that on average people will

commute just two or three times a week

in the new world.

Andrew Haines, chief executive of

Network Rail, said: “We are running

thousands of trains every day with

hundreds of thousands of empty seats

including at peak times. So if you want

to use the train to get back to work, you

absolutely can.

“As passengers return to the railway

then we will further increase service

levels with the reliability that those pas-

sengers deserve.”

Cousens said that the fall in car usage

should be welcomed by city transport

officials, who have been increasingly

drawing up plans to hit drivers with

“punitive charges and taxes” to force

them on to public transport.

He said: “With the new travel trends,

the case for measures such as the work-

place parking levy tax on staff is consid-

erably weakened. Bristol and Reading

have come to see this.”

Figures as of 6pm yesterday. Source: Our World in Data

(latest figures available) and gov.uk. Note: Selected countries.

Percentage of population who have

received at least one vaccine dose

(total doses administered in brackets)

Daily

(Feb 01)

First dose

12,

Boosters

(Feb 01)

37,

Second

48.5m

Second

26,

Total

37.4m

First dose

52.4m

People

vaccinated

in UK

How Britain compares

UAE 99% (23.5m)

Portugal 94.2% (21.6m)

Malta 90% (1.2m)

87.5% (90.3m)

Canada 85.2% (78.2m)

Italy 83.2% (128.8m)

Australia 84.2% (50.1m)

Ireland 80.7% (10.4m)

79.8% (136.7m)

75.4% (539.9m)

France

US

UK 77.1% (138.2m)

Spain

Germany 75.2% (165.4m)

Greece 74. 9 % (19.2m)

KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS

Booster hesitancy linked

to higher deaths in the US

David Charter Washington

The US has a higher death rate from

Omicron than other wealthy countries,

exacerbated by risk factors such as

obesity and a lower take-up of vaccina-

tions, especially among older people.

Americans are dying from Covid-

this year at nearly double the daily rate

of Britons and four times the rate of

Germans. One factor behind the high

death rate from Omicron, which gener-

ally causes milder symptoms than pre-

vious variants, is the lower take-up of

booster jabs: 12 per cent of Americans

aged over 65 are not fully vaccinated

and 43 per cent have not had a booster.

In contrast, only 4 per cent of the

over-65s in England have not been fully

vaccinated and 9 per cent have not had

a booster. “It’s not just vaccination... it’s

whether or not people have been boost-

ed, and also whether or not people have

been infected in the past,” Lauren Ancel

Meyers, of the University of Texas at

Austin’s Covid-19 modelling consort-

ium, told The New York Times. The US

stands out as the wealthy country with

the highest cumulative total of deaths

in the Omicron wave and it now has the

highest per capita death rate during the

entire pandemic.

The US has the highest share of the

adult population who are clinically

overweight at 36 per cent, compared

with 29 per cent for Australia and Cana-

da, and 28 per cent for Britain, accord-

ing to WHO figures.

Americans are more likely to lack

trust in the government than people in

other western nations, making them

less inclined to follow public health

measures, according to Thomas Bolly-

ky of the global health programme at

the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is the co-author of a study in The

Lancet that found a level of distrust had

strong associations with a nation’s

infection rate. “The best way for the

government to protect its citizens is to

convince its citizens to protect them-

selves,” Bollyky said.

scandinavia

Norway and Denmark are recruiting

participants for two studies to test

whether wearing glasses can reduce

the risk of Covid-19 infection. The

experiment will last two weeks.

Global cases

381,683,

Global deaths

5,688,

Countries reporting most deaths

Most new cases

US

Brazil

India

Russia

Mexico

Peru

UK

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

890,

628,

497,

325,

306,

205,

157,

1

2

3

4

5

11

France

US

Germany

Brazil

India

UK

413,

398,

211,

171,

161,

88,

Deaths per million population

Rank Now Jan 31, 2021

1,

1,

1,

1,

1,

797

1,

1,

836

949

1,

1,

1,

6,

4,

4,

4,

4,

3,

3,

3,

3,

3,

2,

2,

2,

Peru

Bulgaria

Bosnia & Herz.

Hungary

N. Macedonia

Georgia

Czech Rep

Croatia

Slovakia

Romania

Brazil

US

UK

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

16

27

( 16 )

( 13 )

( 7 )

( 14 )

( 10 )

( 40 )

( 5 )

( 17 )

( 37 )

( 31 )

( 24 )

( 11 )

( 4 )

Data supplied by Johns Hopkins University. US data fluctuates because of irregular reporting by different states. Figures as of 6pm

yesterday. Sources: UK government, Our World in Data, selected countries

World update

united states

US soldiers who refuse to be

vaccinated against Covid-19 will be

discharged immediately, the US army

said, adding that the move was critical

to maintain combat readiness.

Kiwis’ flights

home eased

new zealand

Vaccinated New Zealanders in

Australia can travel home quarantine-

free from February 27 while citizens

elsewhere must wait a further two

weeks, Jacinda Ardern, the prime

minister, said as she announced a

phased reopening of borders.

Vaccinated backpackers, some skilled

workers and foreign students will also

be allowed into the country between

March and April, if they self-isolate

instead of being quarantined.

Australian tourists cannot enter until

July and travellers from the rest of the

world will be kept out until October.

tonga

Aid shipments are suspected of taking

Covid-19 to Tonga after a volcanic

eruption and tsunami devastated the

Pacific island nation. Siaosi Sovaleni,

the prime minister, announced a

lockdown after the first community

cases were recorded. Australia’s

defence chiefs denied that its warship,

HMAS Adelaide, was the source.