MAIDENHEAD’S MP Theresa May has accused the government of putting businesses at risk for “stopping and starting” sectors of the economy amid new Covid-19 variant.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, December 6, the former Prime Minister said new variants will appear “year after year” and ministers need to accept that we need to learn to live with Covid-19 instead of locking down parts of the UK’s economy.

She also said the Omicron variant appears to be more transmissible but potentially leads to less serious illness than other variants and that annual vaccination was the solution.

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Mrs May said: “The early indications of Omicron are that it is more transmissible put potentially that leads to less serious illness than other variants. I understand that will be the normal progress of the virus.

“Variants will continue to appear year after year. When is the government going to accept that learning to live with Covid, which we all have to do, means we will almost certainly have an annual vaccine and we cannot respond to new variants by stopping and starting sectors of our economy which leads to businesses going under and jobs being lost?”

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Sajid Javid the Omicron variant is transmitting in the community in multiple regions of England.

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He said: “In terms of the severity of this, I think we shouldn’t jump to any conclusion, we just don’t have enough data.

“It is not going away for many, many years and perhaps it will lead to annual vaccinations, but we have to find ways to continue with life as normal.”

As of December 6, there have been 336 confirmed cases of the highly transmissible variant. Mr Javid said none of the infected people have been admitted to hospital, as far as he knows.