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The new, more contagious strain of Covid-19 that first emerged in south-eastern England was already spreading rapidly even during the country’s second lockdown in November, according to a report released Thursday by scientists from the Imperial College London.
A report by scientists from Imperial College London released on December 31 estimated that the new strain of coronavirus tripled its number of infections in England during the November lockdown, while the number of new cases caused by the previous variant decreased by a third.
The new strain recorded a higher reproduction rate (R) – which determines how contagious a disease is based on the number of people infected by each infected person – of 0.7 compared to 0.4 for the previous strain, even with the “high levels of social distancing”. during the lockdown before Christmas.
An R rate must be less than 1 for the number of new cases to start to decrease. The UK government’s latest estimate of the R-rate for the whole of the UK, released on December 23, was between 1.1 and 1.3.
The emergence of the new Covid-19 strain prompted more than 50 countries to impose travel restrictions on the UK in late December, many of which were later lifted. France reported its first case of the new variant on its soil on December 25.
“There is a huge difference in the ease with which the variant virus is spread,” Axel Gandy, statistician at Imperial College London and co-author of the report, told the BBC. “This is the most serious change in the virus since the start of the epidemic,” he said.
Research from Imperial College also found that the new strain initially spread faster in people under the age of 20, but then began to spread to other age groups.
“The first data was collected around the time of the November lockdown when schools were open and the activities of the adult population were more restricted,” Gandy said. “We are now seeing that the new virus has increased contagiousness in all age groups,” he continued.
The government reimposed lockdown measures in areas covering 78% of England’s population on Wednesday, while regional authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also rolled back lockdown measures.
Intensive care units in London and the surrounding south-eastern region exceeded capacity on December 29, with occupancy reaching 114 and 113% respectively, according to NHS data leaked to the trade publication Health Services Journal. In response, the government activated one of its Nightingale hospitals – designed to exclusively treat Covid-19 patients, reducing pressure on overcrowded hospitals – in London on December 31.
The Imperial College report suggested that keeping schools closed after the Christmas break will help contain the spread of the virus: “Of particular concern is whether it will be possible to maintain control of transmission while allowing schools to reopen in January. The government has extended the Christmas holidays until January 11, when secondary schools in England are expected to resume classroom attendance. Students will return to primary schools in England on January 4, except in the most severe viral areas, including London.
It is “inevitable” that schools must remain closed to prevent the new variant of Covid-19 from spiraling out of control, Deepti Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, told the Financial Times.
The death toll from Covid-19 reached 981 on Wednesday, the highest daily toll since the first outbreak of the coronavirus in the spring. Overall, the UK has recorded over 2.5 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus, while its death toll stands at over 74,000, the second highest in Europe after Italy and the sixth in the world.
The government will need to speed up vaccine deployment if it wants to contain the new Covid-19 strain, its scientific advisory committee suggested on December 22, warning that “current vaccination rates are unlikely to significantly change the epidemiology” of the virus.
The UK was the first Western country to approve Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs for emergency use. Authorities have so far distributed one million vaccines, Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote in a Tweeter. More than 940,000 people had the first stroke, the BBC reported.
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