Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has declared a "major incident" to help the city's overwhelmed hospitals amid a surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant.
"This is a statement of how serious things are," the mayor said, as quoted by Reuters.
The UK Health Security Agency said on Saturday that the number of confirmed Omicron variant COVID-19 cases stood at 24,968 as of 17 December, up by more than 10,000 cases from 24 hours earlier.
A major incident is usually declared when a situation or an event has had serious consequences and requires special arrangements to be enforced by authorities.
Although UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday "we are not closing things down," health officials are reportedly preparing draft new rules that – in case they are introduced – will ban indoor mixing in England except for work for two weeks after Christmas.