One in Three People with Cold Symptoms Have Coronavirus: Study

Professor Tim Spector, who runs a COVID study tracking data from one million Britons, said fully vaccinated adults tended to only develop mild cold-like symptoms.

He warned many people who were infected were therefore 'going to parties and spreading it around'.

The professor of genetic epidemiology called for anyone with symptoms, such as a runny nose or a sore throat, to self-isolate and avoid all Christmas parties until they received a negative test result, ChronicleLive reported.

“At the moment, we’re estimating that somewhere between one and 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 compiling that problem much faster than we would need to.”

The professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London 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.

“So 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.”

Professor Spector said people with cold-like symptoms should isolate for the first few days while they are most contagious, reports Hull Live.

“That’s when you’re most contagious, that’s when you’re most likely to transmit,” he told Times Radio.

“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.

“And so we should really be encouraging people not to come in to the office, not to go to that Christmas party if they’re feeling unwell.

“Take a test and then, when the symptoms subside, then they can come out – it doesn’t have to be 10 days but just those first few days are probably the most crucial.

“I think we need to get that message out there if we’re going to really have an impact in the next few weeks.”

Scientists are hopeful that the Omicron variant will not cause more severe symptoms and that the T-cell immunity provided by vaccines will prevent severe disease. T-cells are a type of white blood cell that kills COVID.