Don’t leave home if you have the sniffles – it could be Covid, warns expert

Don't leave the house if you have a cold, Professor Tim Spector has said, as he warned one in three colds are “actually due to Covid”.

The professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, who founded the Zoe app, said people with cold-like symptoms should work from home and avoid Christmas parties in a bid to stem the spread of coronavirus.

The public should be "much more open-minded about who we are testing" and "get more people to isolate at least for a few days with cold-like symptoms", he told Times Radio.

"At the moment, we're estimating that somewhere between one in three and one in four colds are actually due to Covid," he said.

"And so that's quite a high rate of people that are currently not even bothered to get a lateral flow test, or getting a PCR test, going to parties and spreading it around.

"So, if that transfers to omicron then we're going to be compounding that problem much faster than we would need to."

He added: "We want to tell people that if you don't feel well that day, don't go out, don't go to work, work from home, because the start of that sniffle, the start of that sore throat, that headache could be a mild dose of Covid that is just breaking through your vaccine.

"I think everyone needs to be much more aware of a whole range of symptoms and not wait for the loss of smell or taste which may never come, not wait for fever, not wait for that persistent cough."

The first few days of infections are when you are most contagious, Prof Spector said.

"Whether it's a respiratory virus, you're just giving someone a cold, or you might be giving them omicron or delta, then it's those first few days," he said.