COVID-19 Delta Variant: UK Study Shows Doubles Every 11 Days

While British MPs have heard from experts that society should learn to live with the coronavirus and that adjusting vaccines for each variant would not be possible in the short term, the speed of the spread of new infections in the UK has become a global concern.

COVID-19 cases are ‘increasing exponentially’ in England, with the latest estimates putting the virus’s reproduction rate in R at 1.44.

With 9,055 COVID-19 contaminations yesterday, data from the REACT-1 study, conducted by scientists from Imperial College London, showed that the number of cases doubles every 11 days, at least according to the survey carried out in England.

According to this work, infections increased by 50% between May 3 and June 7, coinciding with the rise of the Delta variant, which has become dominant in the UK since it was first detected in India.

The release of the figures comes a day after one of the country’s top experts, Professor Andrew Pollard, told MPs yesterday that society would have to live with COVID-19 in the future, and tailoring vaccines for each variant would take time.

Pollard, who was testifying before the science and technology committee, argued that the new emerging variants “will arrive”. Indeed, the British public authorities have already confirmed that Delta outperformed the Alpha (Kent) variant and now accounts for up to 90% of coronavirus cases

Stephen Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at the Imperial and one of the study’s authors, pointed out that the exponential increase in prevalence is due to infections in young people.

“REACT-1” showed that the prevalence is highest in people aged 5 to 12, as well as in young adults aged 18 to 24.

Commenting on the findings to the British press, Riley said that “The key to highlight here is that we are in a very different part of the UK outbreak and it is very difficult to predict how long the exponential phase will be.”

For the expert last fall and last spring, when exponential growth was observed, the situation was more alarming because there was “Very little immunity in the population.”

“But now, thanks to the vaccination program, we know that there is a lot of immunity in the population,” added the researcher. However, the person responsible for the investigation also explained that “Although there is greater immunity, this does not prevent the exponential growth, which is recorded.”

Health officials hope that the expansion of the vaccination plan “should contribute substantially to reducing the overall growth of the epidemic.”

In fact, The 21 and 22 year old became eligible for the vaccine on Wednesday and expecting people between the ages of 18 and 20 to do so at the end of the week. In addition, it is planned to vaccinate in schools.

One of the study’s authors, Paul Elliott, director of the REACT program and president of epidemiology and public health medicine at Imperial, said: “I think we can take some comfort in the fact that when we look at the detailsThere seems to be very, very good protection at the older ages, where virtually everyone is vaccinated twice.

“And in the under 65 age group, where a much smaller proportion have been vaccinated or double vaccinated, the majority of infections occur in the unvaccinated group.”

For his part, Professor Riley stressed that “these schedules are consistent with two doses of very effective vaccine.”

Germany is preparing for autumn

In view of the increasing spread of the “Delta” also in Germany, Immunologists have also called on politicians across the country to intensively prepare for a new wave of wreaths in the fall.

“It can be safely assumed that the Delta variant will be the dominant variant in Germany by autumn at the latest“said the secretary general of the German Society for Immunology (DGfI), Carsten Watzl, of the” Augsburger Allgemeine “.

This variant dramatically increased its proportion of new Sars-CoV-2 infections in Germany within a week. At 6.2% in calendar week 22 (May 31-June 6), this is still relatively rare, according to the latest report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Wednesday night variants classified as disturbing. .

The previous week (week 21), the proportion of the Delta variant in the samples examined was still 3.7 percent.

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