A COVID expert has accused ministers of “wanting to get rid of data and move on” – as cases across the UK have spiked by nearly 50% over the last week.

In the last seven days, 444,201 coronavirus cases were reported – a 48.1% increase on the previous week.

The COVID Infection Survey, carried out by the Office for National Statistics, has also showed an increase in cases across the UK, which Health Secretary Sajid Javid said was “expected” following the easing of restrictions in England in late January.

Travel rules have also been scrapped, with passenger locator forms and tests for arrivals no longer needed from Friday morning.

Speaking to Sky News, Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College London, said he was concerned that restrictions were being rolled back.

Accusing the government of “wanting to get rid of the data and moving on”, Prof Spector said the ZOE app, which King’s College London works with to record daily COVID figures, was now being “cancelled”.

Prof Spector told Sky News: “It is disappointing that as we hit record levels of COVID, [Transport Secretary] Grant Shapps is saying it is safe.

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“It is slightly ironic they’ve cancelled the Zoe app, it is like they just want to get rid of the data and move on.

“Other surveillance tools have been given the axe means we will have less eyes on the ground and radar on the next variant.

“At least ZOE has agreed to fund us until we get more funding, it is going to keep going but we need some help longer term to do that.”

He went on to warn ZOE was seeing big increases in the number cases among elderly people.

Prof Spector said: “We’re seeing a real increase in the elderly getting COVID and I think that will start putting pressure on hospitals.

“It seems very hard to stop omicron, especially the new form of it, deltacron. It will be going up to 250,000 a day soon.”

Mr Javid said that a “handful” of cases of the so-called deltacron variant had been identified in the UK, but were “not of particular concern”.

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He added that 99.9% of UK infections are of the omicron variant.

Mr Javid told Sky News: “We keep the situation very carefully under review.

“There’s no other variant of concern out there that is an issue at this point in time.

“We have seen some rises in infections over the last week but given the increase in social mixing this was to be expected.”

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