Dominic Raab made a rather significant slip-up on Tuesday when he told journalists there were 250 people in hospital with the Omicron variant.
Moments later, the government issued a correction and confirmed there were still just 10 people who had been hospitalised with Omicron – the same figure which was reported on Monday.
Raab had told Sky News’ Kay Burley: “The last I saw was in the low hundreds – I think 250, the last time I looked.”
But approximately half an hour later, the deputy prime minister told BBC Breakfast: “I know we’ve had one death and I think we’ve got nine people who are in hospital with it.
“Still a relatively low number and we’re tracking that very carefully, but the data is shifting all the time.”
However, political correspondent Kate McCann later told Burley: ”The actual figure is 10 and I’m sure people will be pleased to hear it is nowhere near as high as 250.
“We understand that Dominic Raab misunderstood or misheard the question, he meant to say there are 10 people in hospital with Omicron variant at the moment.
“Of course, 250 people would be incredibly high.
“We know that that’s the worry – that the pressure on the NHS is the concern for the government and that’s why we are talking about the potential for further restrictions.”
The Commons will be voting on bringing in the government’s ‘plan B’ which includes using Covid passes for crowded venues and working from home guidance on Tuesday.
Hitting out at Raab’s mistake, McCann added: “Clearly that’s a significant error and there will be people out there who heard that and thought, ′wow, that seems much higher than I thought it was going to be’.”
On Monday, health secretary Sajid Javid had told journalists that 10 people were hospitalised with Omicron, one had died and that there were 3,000 infections altogether in the UK.
Raab then back-pedalled again when speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain later on Tuesday.
Presenter Aldi Ray asked the deputy prime minister: “If you don’t know the absolute basics, how can we respond to it?”
Despite telling BBC Breakfast there were nine people in hospital before, Raab then told GMB there were 10, leading the presenter to point out: “You’ve now given three different numbers on three different national media shows to the population.”
Raab curtly replied: “I understand you like ranting your politicians in the morning, but can I answer the question because it’s a fair question and I want to answer it.
“First of all, I misheard one of the questions around whether it was hospitalisations of Omicron cases or generally.”
He said that the latest daily hospitalisations run at 900, that 10 people are hospitalised with Omicron and one has died.