The UK is facing a wave of COVID-19 infections from the new Omicron variant in numbers that it has never experienced before.

The general public is different from the one that faced the first wave in 2020. The UK is used to social distancing now and a large percentage of the population has had at least two vaccine doses.

Nonetheless England's Chief Medical Officer ​​Chris Whitty is still deeply concerned.

"This is a really serious threat at the moment," he told a committee of lawmakers. "The question is how big a threat – there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know are bad."

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Whitty went on to warn about the speed of expected infections in the UK and the lack of solid data on just how much of a medical threat Omicron will be to individual patients.

The problem worrying doctors is that even a very small percentage of a very large number is a lot of people and hospital staff are likely to start going off sick as those numbers climb.

Village halls, community centers and even cathedrals across the country have given way to a small army of hastily assembled vaccinators as the public line up in their thousands to finish off their vaccination treatments.

"We've got St John's Ambulance here today," said Clare Watson, a clinician working in Cheshire. "We've got Cheshire Fire Service as well as our GPs and our hospital providers actually doing the vaccinations. But the military has been fantastic, so massive thanks to them."

The government is so far ruling out another lockdown, but the public are taking matters into their own hands and cancelling social events in the run up to Christmas.

The hospitality sector is complaining of cancellations and the Confederation of British Industry is already calling for government support for the economy.

Those calls are likely to continue. Parliament goes into recess for Christmas next week but the prime minister has already pledged to recall MPs during the holiday to debate any emergency measures that might become necessary.