The Kuwaiti embassy in the United Kingdom has encouraged its citizens to leave the country due to a "significant and unprecedented" increase in Omicron cases there, the Gulf country's state news agency reported on Sunday.
The daily number of new COVID-19 infections across Britain rose to a record 189,846 on Friday, far higher than during previous peaks.
The UK government has been making contingency plans in case hospitals, schools and other workplaces are hit by major staff shortages amid the country’s record-breaking spike in coronavirus infections.
Public sector workplaces have been preparing for staff absences ranging from 10 per cent to 25 per cent as COVID-19 sickens more people or forces them to isolate, the Cabinet Office said.
The highly transmissible omicron variant has caused Britain’s daily new caseload to soar over Christmas and the New Year. About 1 in 25 people in England - or about 2 million people - had COVID-19 in the week before Christmas, the Office of National Statistics estimated. In London, the figure was 1 in 15.
