{"id":42650,"date":"2021-12-08T12:04:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T12:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=39437d1f7601b250afe67d1421bb2e01"},"modified":"2021-12-08T12:04:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T12:04:12","slug":"uk-set-to-follow-scotland-with-work-from-home-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/uk-set-to-follow-scotland-with-work-from-home-order\/","title":{"rendered":"UK set to follow Scotland with work from home order"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Bobby Hellard<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
8 Dec, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Nicola Sturgeon has asked for people in Scotland to work from home<\/a> until the middle of January to prevent the “potentially rapid rise” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar announcement is expected to be made by the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, with wide reports of “Plan B” restrictions to be implemented on Thursday, according to Reuters<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nCases of the Omicron variant<\/a> have increased in Scotland, shooting up from 28 to 99 in a matter of days, according to the leader of the Scottish National Party. There is also a belief that around 4% of COVID-19 cases north of the border are likely to be the new strain of the virus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If you had staff working from home at the start of the pandemic, please now do so again,” said Sturgeon according to the Independent<\/a><\/em>. “We’re asking you to do this from now until the middle of January when we will review this advice.”<\/p>\n

“I know how difficult this is, but I cannot stress enough how much difference we think this could make in helping step transmission and avoiding the need for even more onerous measures.”<\/p>\n

The UK government had previously ruled out working from home, suggesting it wasn’t necessary, but the greater transmissibility of Omicron might have forced another U-turn. Sage professor Neil Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the new variant appears to be doubling every two to three days.<\/p>\n

“It’s likely to overtake Delta before Christmas at this rate, precisely when is hard to say,” Ferguson said. “We’ll start seeing an impact on overall case numbers – it’s still probably only 2%, 3% of all cases so it’s kind of swamped, but within a week or two we’ll start seeing overall case numbers accelerate quite markedly as well.”<\/p>\n

The decision to go back to remote working<\/a> comes as the government faces intense scrutiny over a Christmas party held at Number 10 during last year’s lockdown<\/span>. Some Tory MPs<\/span> are reportedly concerned that the public may be unwilling to follow new restrictions after a video emerged of Downing Street aides laughing about a social gathering in the weeks leading up to Christmas.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bobby Hellard<\/p>\n

8 Dec, 2021 <\/p>\n

Nicola Sturgeon has asked for people in Scotland to work from home until the middle of January to prevent the “potentially rapid rise” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.\u00a0
\nA similar announcement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42651,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650\/revisions\/42651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}