Star comment: It's wait and see over Omicron variant

There is a sense of being on the eve of a great battle, with the outcome uncertain.

We are in a wait-and-see stage to find out just what impact Omicron has in terms of its virulence and ability to evade the protections and defences we put in place. But it is already making its presence felt by forcing the government to move to its Plan B, which has made for another dose of restrictions imposed on businesses and ordinary Britons at a time when there was a growing hope that we were over the worst.

As things turn out, we probably are past the worst as even the most dire predictions would not see a return to the appalling death toll of the days before the vaccination programme really got rolling. Our salvation has been the jabs.

With Omicron we start from a better initial position, and our way to combat this new and unwelcome assault from the variant is to take the rollout of the booster jabs to a new level.

The government’s target is ambitious, but that was said too of the original jabs targets. The challenge is to make it happen while also ensuring that the resources of the NHS are not so seriously diverted that the service is denied to folk who have other medical issues in need to prompt attention.

In the coming weeks all eyes will be on hospitalisations and pressure on the NHS. If that starts to crank up then we can expect to see more measures put in place. In the meantime we all have a responsibility to ensure we get our boosters, but also to behave sensibly to reduce the risks of transmission.

We have come a long way in the treatment of many common cancers, but we have also come a long way from the days when having cancer was something people did not talk about.

While many understandably still prefer to keep such matters private, those in public life who open up, like the much-loved actress Dame Julie Walters, help create an atmosphere in which people feel they can share their experiences and share information.

It’s like being in a support group in which they can draw hope and support from the example of others, like Dame Julie herself, who after treatment is getting along fine, albeit with a somewhat different outlook on what is important in life.

For those for whom the diagnosis makes them feel isolated, the positive message is “you are not alone”.