Dominic Raab gets the number of people hospitalised with omicron wrong twice in painful broadcast round

Dominic Raab has been criticised after he twice provided the wrong figures about the number of people hospitalised with omicron.

On a more plonkery broadcast round than usual, the deputy PM and justice secretary provided three different figures to three different shows, first claiming it was 250, then 9, before landing at the correct figure, 10 - and it’s not like it is something that is important for the public to know...

First, speaking on Sky News, he said 250 people has been hospitalised due to the variant, despite Sajid Javid putting the figure at 10 last night.

“Last I saw it was in the low hundreds, 250 the last time I looked, but of course the data is being updated all the time,” he said.

Then, he popped on to BBC Breakfast where he massively slashed the figure to nine: “I know we’ve had one death. I think we’ve got nine people who are in hospital with it.”

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Finally, he went on Good Morning Britain where he said that he “misheard” Kay Burley, and said the actual figure is 10.

“First of all, I misheard one of the questions around whether it was hospitalisations of omicron-related patients or more generally, but the figures are: 1 death from omicron, 10 in hospital, and I can tell you the latest daily hospitalisations (for all Covid strains) run at 900,” he said.

His comments came as modelling from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggested omicron is currently infecting 200,000 people a day across the UK.

For the avoidance of any doubt, the number of people in hospital with the particular strain of Covid is 10, as confirmed to Sky and the Mirror and yesterday Boris Johnson confirmed that one person had died with it.

A real “the sea was closed” moment.