Page 8 - Over 70s News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Helena wilkinson, bbc news. syria's president, bashar al—assad, has made his first visit to an arab country since the beginning of the syrian civil war 11 years ago. president assad arrived in the united arab emirates yesterday for meetings with leaders who had previously backed rebel attempts to overthrow his leadership. the us said it was "profoundly disappointed" in the trip. latest figures show nearly 3.3 million people in the uk, would have tested positive for covid in the week to last saturday. that's one in every 20 people. there are a record number of cases in scotland, and the rate ...

The moment amongst over 70s, which is as we would expect to see a little spike as this variant takes hold, but there is no evidence yet that it's any more avirulent than omicron. so as long as our vaccinations are still working, there's obviously a danger of the third dose now beginning to wear off and some of the older people who got it first, and they'll be talking about bring forth that fourth wave, but the new sub variant, we always have a few days of tension, we've seen it time and time again, the hope is obviously that it will turn out to be no more transmissible the end omicron and omic...

At the graph you can see what's been happening through the course of the pandemic, really. idraw happening through the course of the pandemic, really. i draw your attention first to the highest point on the right—hand side, where it's over 4 million infections, that's over 4 million infections, that's overwinter, then we saw it coming down, it was tied in with easing restrictions, what we seem quite recently as this uptick, so despite it coming down to 2.5 million we are now at about 3.3 million people testing positive. if that's the big tide of covid infections, there are lots of little cur...

But we are now seeing infections among older age groups as well, so young adults from the mid—20s to the mid—30s, but spreading right the way up to increases now in the over 70s, although they remain the lowest group to be infected. there's some more encouraging news on boosters. new uk data suggests a booster shot is 88% effective at preventing people ending up in hospital due to 0micron. and after a huge push, all uk nations say they've hit the target of offering all adults a third dose by the end of the year. i would just say to people again, there's 1.5 million slots out there over the...

But there were big rises too in the north—west, yorkshire and the humber and west midlands. other regions weren't far behind. statisticians say infections are twice the level they were this time last winter in england because they're being fuelled by the more infectious omicron variant. across all age groups, we are seeing increases, but particularly driven by those young age groups, we've seen increases among school—age children fairly recently, particularly from nursery through to primary. but we are now seeing infections among older age groups as well, so young adults from the mid—20s...