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The wave of Omicron infections Wales is experiencing is expected to be short-lived, the country's first minister has said.

Speaking at a Welsh government press conference, Mark Drakeford says Omicron is now dominant in Wales and cases are rising "rapidly" every day.

The previous waves of infection - driven by other coronavirus variants - were "nothing compared to the size and speed of this Omicron wave", he says.

But Drakeford adds: "Unlike previous waves, which have lasted many months, we believe this one will be short-lived. "This is because of the speed Omicron is moving at."

The first minister says Wales has not reached the peak of this wave yet, which could be another 10 to 14 days away.

We have some more Covid data for you with the latest from the Office for National Statistics infection survey.

The number of people in the UK who would have tested positive in the week ending 31 December was more than 3.7 million, the ONS estimates.

This is the highest level of infections recorded by the ONS since the survey started and equates to 5.8% of the population.

For this same period the ONS says:

• one in 15 people would have tested positive in England
• one in 20 in Wales
• one in 25 in Northern Ireland
• one in 20 in Scotland

The Omicron variant continued to increase rapidly across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and Omicron is now the most common variant across all UK countries, the ONS says.

Sarah Crofts, head of analytical outputs for the Covid-19 Infection Survey, says: "While infections have increased across all age groups in England, there are some early signs of infections no longer increasing among some, including secondary school ages.

"We will continue to closely monitor this as schools return after the Christmas holidays."

These figures may sound somewhat familiar as the prime minister quoted them earlier in the week.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Ali is a paramedic in Yorkshire who says colleagues are “crying at work” because of the stress they’re facing.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live as 200 members of the armed forces are sent to ease pressure on staff shortages in London NHS hospitals, Ali says people should “use the services responsibly”.

“They should still ring for an ambulance if they have an emergency,” she says. “They just may need to wait some time before that ambulance comes.

“It’s not a good use of our resources to be sitting outside a hospital, it puts immense pressure on staff… our job is to go out and respond to emergencies, so that’s what we want to be doing.”

“Without a doubt we’ve got [staff] who are frustrated and angry – people who are facing really high levels of anxiety and stress.

“We’ve got people that are disillusioned with the service and are thinking of leaving [their jobs].”

We’re still digging through those figures from NHS England.

Covid-related staff absences at hospital trusts in England have trebled since the beginning of December.

Some 35,596 daily absences were recorded on average in the week up to 2 January – up from 11,957 in the week ending 5 December.

You can see that change in the red area of the chart below.

Back at the beginning of December, Covid cases were relatively flat - Omicron was just beginning to take hold, having only been named by the World Health Organization a few days earlier.

Covid absences are rising quickly in most parts of the country, fastest in the north, but there is a silver lining.

London, which has been at the leading edge of the Omicron wave and seen cases start to fall recently, has seen absences flatten in the most recent week.

Responding to the latest figures on staff absences Patricia Marquis, Royal College of Nursing director for England, says the figures show why the government announced military support for the NHS in London last night.

"Outside of healthcare, staffing shortages are closing shops and cancelling trains but nurses can't stop helping their patients," she says.

"Instead, they find themselves spread thinner and thinner, but they can’t keep spinning plates indefinitely either - this situation is simply not safe."

She calls for the highest grade of masks to be provided to NHS staff and for them to receive priority testing as she says too many are exposed due to "improper protection".

Image source, Getty Images

And here's a reminder of those changes to testing rules which have been relaxed for some people travelling to the UK.

Fully vaccinated passengers and under-18s no longer need to take a pre-departure test two days before travelling - and don’t need to isolate while waiting for their post-arrival PCR result.

All other travellers who are not fully vaccinated, aged 12 and over, must show proof of a negative test taken in the two days before departure - and take a PCR test two days after arriving.

Digital Covid passes showing your vaccination status can be downloaded to your phone. They must be in English, French or Spanish.

European Union residents can use the EU Digital Covid Certificate to show their vaccination status or test results.

For more details on the changes, click here.

Image source, Getty Images

As we discussed earlier, as of today, the UK has relaxed the testing rules for international travel - which travel firms say has led to a surge in holiday bookings.

Jet2 says demand has returned to "around pre-Covid levels".

The holiday company saw a "huge spike" in bookings, boss Steve Heapy tells the BBC, after the government said pre-departure tests for fully vaccinated people would be scrapped.

EasyJet says its bookings rose almost 200% compared to last week, while Tui says it experienced a "strong uptick".

EasyJet says flights to Spanish destinations Tenerife, Alicante, Malaga and Lanzarote were the most in demand, with bookings for the latter up 427% week on week.

The airline has put about 1.1 million more seats on sale from London Gatwick for summer 2022.

Read more here.

“There is music, there is dancing… but there is also frustration and anger.”

The BBC's Shaimaa Khalil has been meeting Djokovic fans who have gathered in Melbourne to show their support for the world number one.

The tennis star has spent his first night at an immigration detention hotel in the city and is facing deportation after his entry to the country was denied on Wednesday.

As we mentioned, a top Australian official says Novak Djokovic “is not being held captive” and “is free to leave at any time that he chooses to do so”.

A court challenge is due on Monday, a week before the Australian Open begins.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

Image source, GETTY IMAGES

It's been back to school this week - with new guidance in place for secondary school pupils in England. They've returned from the Christmas break to new advice - to wear face coverings in lessons and to take lateral flow tests at school before heading into classrooms.

The recommendations, external are not mandatory however.

There are no statistics yet that show how many pupils have been complying, but some parents, pupils and teachers have been telling us that a number are choosing not to.

Read the full story here.

As we've been reporting, a combination of winter pressures and the ongoing Covid pandemic is placing a huge strain on some hospitals in the UK.

It means some patients are facing long waits for emergency treatment, wards are short of beds, and staff absences are rising.

We've created an NHS tracker tool so you can enter a postcode to find out what is happening in your area. Try it out here.

It is not likely that we'll see a big surge in serious illness and deaths during the UK's current Omicron wave, a top statistician says - so it's more a case of managing the disruption to the NHS.

Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge says that in London, hospitalisations seem to be stable and may even be declining, but admissions are rising in other parts of the country.

"There's still no sign of a serious increase in intensive care ventilation and deaths, and we would have expected to see that by now," he says.

He says on 16 December, Sage said hospitalisations in England were likely to go above 3,000 a day if we just stuck to Plan B.

But it looks like admissions are currently above 2,000 a day and with good luck they won't go above 3,000, he says.

"This is down to the fact that people have voluntarily been very cautious about their behaviour," he adds.

Image source, Getty Images

We have some reaction to those NHS England figures for you.

NHS national medical director Professor Stephen Powis says rising Covid-19 cases are "piling even more pressure" on hospital trust workers.

"Omicron means more patients to treat and fewer staff to treat them," he says. "In fact, around 10,000 more colleagues across the NHS were absent each day last week compared with the previous seven days and almost half of all absences are now down to Covid."

He says that while we do not know the full scale of the potential impact the Omicron variant could have, it is clear it spreads more easily and as a result "Covid cases in hospitals are the highest they've been since February last year".

Staff are "stepping up as they always do", he adds, but people can help them by ensuring they are vaccinated.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Nearly a quarter of ambulances faced long delays handing over patients to A&E staff last week.

Some 23% of crews had to wait more than 30 minutes in the week up to 2 January – it should only take 15.

That is a similar level to what was being seen before Christmas, but above the numbers seen before the pandemic began when 18% of ambulances were facing delays at this point of winter.

It comes amid mounting pressure on health services with Covid admissions rising.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

As of this morning, it is understood there were 16 hospital trusts in England that were in critical incident status.

This is down from 17 on Thursday afternoon. It is around one in eight of the total.

On Wednesday night the number exceeded 20, but since then several have declared their critical incident over, NHS sources told the BBC.

A critical incident is declared when a trust is worried it might not be able to provide core priority services, such as emergency care.

It is an internal warning to the local system and means extra support can be provided - such as redeploying staff or helping find places in care facilities for patients who are medically fit to be discharged but cannot be released because there are no available places in care homes or support in the community available.

Robert Cuffe
BBC head of statistics

Approximately 4% of staff at acute NHS trusts in England were off due to Covid each day during the week ending 2 January.

That's 35,596 staff each day on average, up by 41% on the previous week.

There were 80,295 absences (about 9% of staff) due to any sickness or isolation each day that week.

The national figures mask stark regional differences.

Covid absences were up by roughly three quarters in the North East and Yorkshire and in the North West.

Some of the hardest-hit hospitals in the country are in the north of England: Sheffield’s teaching hospitals were missing 11% of staff due to Covid.

But in London, where data suggest a slowdown in the Omicron wave after Christmas, staff absences actually fell very slightly (by 4%) when using the average figure. So in London absences are broadly flat.

Here is some more from the latest NHS England data.

In north-west England, 7,338 NHS staff at hospital trusts were absent due to Covid on 2 January, up 85% week-on-week from 3,966, while in north-east England and Yorkshire there were 8,788 absences, more than double the number a week earlier (4,179).

In London - where the impact of the Omicron variant was first felt in the UK - absences were up 4% week-on-week, from 4,580 to 4,765.

A total of 39,142 NHS staff at hospital trusts in England were absent for Covid-19 reasons on 2 January, up 59% on the previous week (24,632) and more than three times the number at the start of December (12,508), according to new figures from NHS England.

The total includes staff who were ill with coronavirus or who were having to self-isolate.

Shaimaa Khalil
Australia correspondent

Image source, PA Media

Returning to the continuing row over tennis star Novak Djokovic, who was detained after arriving in Australia this week over Covid vaccine rules.

He spent the night in a Melbourne immigration detention hotel waiting for a court decision on whether or not he can remain in the country to play in the Australian Open - after his legal team challenged the cancellation of his visa.

Yesterday Djokovic’s mother Dijana said her son, who has previously said he is opposed to getting the vaccine, was being kept like a prisoner.

But the Australian home affairs minister Karen Andrews says the men's world number one “is not being held captive” and “is free to leave at any time that he chooses to do so”.

She says exemptions for other tennis players and officials are also being investigated, as we've reported.

Read more about the story here.

Is this NHS winter crisis different?published at 09:21 Greenwich Mean Time 7 January 2022

09:21 GMT 7 January 2022

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

The NHS is in crisis every winter – so is this any different?

The army has been brought in before to lend a hand in extreme circumstances and have already been used in the pandemic.

This tends to be the busiest week for the health service so it’s not surprising given the pressure it is under that steps like this are being taken or that we are hearing so much about critical incidents.

As of yesterday, one in eight hospital trusts in England had declared a critical incident – an internal warning to the system that they are struggling to provide priority services such as emergency care.

We do not have comparable figures for previous years.

But to provide some comparison with previous years, there are two key figures to keep in mind.

Firstly the number of Covid admissions being seen is already double the number normally seen at this time of year for all types of respiratory infection – and it is still rising.

Staff absences are also thought to be twice what they would traditionally be – the latest figures will be published shortly.

As we told you earlier, the armed forces have sent 200 personnel to NHS hospitals in London to help deal with staff shortages.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, says people should not feel "concerned" by their presence.

"In some parts of the country we are going to have to cancel non-urgent operations and I know that's really frustrating for people who've been waiting for a long time, but it's important to understand that these are very special circumstances we're in," he says.

He adds there will also be a "price to be paid" in terms of ambulance wait times or cancelled operations but the "NHS will get through this".