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UK statistics on Covid-19 remain encouraging despite continuing conflicts over vaccine deliveries to Europe. Hospital admissions and daily deaths from the disease continue to decline, with figures in the latter category now in double digits, while the former have fallen to about a tenth of their total two months ago.
However, another category – the number of new diagnoses per day – has plateaued with cases, having dropped from 60,000, leveling off at around 5,000 to 6,000. So why has that number apparently stagnated then that deaths and hospitalizations continue to decline?
The reason is simple, say scientists. The vaccine has been targeted in such a way that the most vulnerable – the elderly in particular – receive beatings before others and this is now having an impact on deaths and hospitalizations.
“Given that the vaccine has been used very widely in the age groups most likely to go to hospital or die, we would expect that – even if the number of infections remains the same – hospitalizations and deaths are decreasing, ”said Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London.
Those who are vulnerable – mainly because of their advanced age – are protected by vaccines, so deaths and hospitalizations go down. Young people – who have yet to be vaccinated but are believed to be responsible for most transmission – continue to spread the virus, although this transmission is limited by the lockdown.
“Now that the schools have reopened, we might see an increase in the number of cases – as we have seen in Israel,” Riley added. “When they opened up after their immunization program was well under way, they experienced a slight increase in cases and hospitalizations, but it was very short lived. Very quickly, he started to descend again. So, for now, Israel’s data looks encouraging. “
However, Riley warned that new variants could change the UK position and trigger increases in the number of cases. “In contrast, UK data since Christmas is positive. It looks very good at the moment, but we will need to continue monitoring cases, on a regional basis, to continue to check for the emergence and possible spread of new variants. “
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