London, Jan 4 (TIWN) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the National Health Service (NHS) will be under "considerable" pressure in the coming weeks amid the latest Covid-19 wave triggered by the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.

The UK saw record numbers of cases in the last days of 2021 though it has not released figures for the whole country this year.  The country is one of Europe's worst affected with a death toll of nearly 149,000.  The prime minister said that he was aware of high levels of hospital staff absences due to COVID, adding: "we're looking at what we can do to move people into those areas that are particularly badly affected".