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Professor Tim Spector (pictured), who runs a Covid study tracking data from one million Britons, said fully vaccinated adults tended to only develop mild cold-like symptoms
One in three people with sniffles or symptoms of the common cold actually have coronavirus, a study suggests.
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.
Professor Spector, who leads the King's College London Zoe Covid study, said: 'At the moment, we're estimating that somewhere between one in three and one in four colds are actually due to Covid.'
He told Times Radio that the UK must 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'.
'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,' he said.
'So if that transfers to Omicron then we're going to be compounding that
