Yongpeng Sun-Tastaufen
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UK reports 6,238 daily Covid cases amid fears over Delta variant infectiousness
Prof Neil Ferguson says India variant may be 30-100% more transmissible than the Alpha variant
Prof Neil Ferguson says India variant may be 30-100% more transmissible than the Alpha variant
The Delta variant of coronavirus is 30% to 100% more transmissible than the previously dominant variant, Prof Neil Ferguson has warned, as the number of daily reported Covid cases exceeded 6,000 for the first time since March.
In one of a number of signs of a third wave, Office for National Statistics data suggested infection levels in England rose by about 75% in a week, with 85,600 people thought to have had Covid in the week ending 29 May – or one in 640 people - compared with 48,500 the week before.
The estimated R number for England is now 1.0 to 1.2, up from 1.0 to 1.1 last week. More than three-quarters of UK adults have now received their first vaccine dose, which ministers hope will break the link between cases and hospitalisations or deaths.
Discussing the Delta variant first identified in India and now dominant in the UK, Ferguson, a leading epidemiologist at Imperial College London whose Covid modelling was key to the UK’s first lockdown, told the BBC: “We’re certainly getting more data. Unfortunately, the news is not as positive as I would like in any respect about the Delta variant. The best estimate at the moment is this variant maybe 60% more transmissible than the Alpha [Kent] variant.
“There’s some uncertainty around that depending on assumption and how you analyse the data, between about 30% and maybe even up to 100% more transmissible.”
Previous modelling has suggested that the Delta variant being 50% more transmissible could translate to up to 10,000 hospitalisations a day, more than double the UK peak of the pandemic so far.
The 60% figure appears to echo data from Public Health England (PHE) on the likelihood that a close contact of a person infected with the Delta variant will themselves become infected – the “secondary attack rate”. The latest PHE report suggests this figure is around 51% higher for contacts of cases with the Delta variant and no travel history. Estimates produced the week before suggested a 67% higher secondary attack rate for the Delta variant.
The Delta variant has also been linked to a more than twofold higher risk of hospitalisation compared with the Alpha variant – although experts have cautioned this is far from certain. The Delta variant is also believed to be somewhat more resistant to Covid vaccines, particularly after the first dose.
The rising cases will put pressure on the prime minister ahead of the 21 June planned lockdown lifting date for England. But on Friday the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, said there was still “nothing at the moment that suggests that we won’t be able to move forward” with the next stage of lifting restrictions.
“We’ve got a further 10 days until we are going to make that decision on or around June 14, so during that period we’ll see where are we with hospitalisations, with deaths, where are we with the vaccine rollout – we’re doing everything we possibly can to expedite that – and then at that point, we’ll make our final decision,” he said.
Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the scientific pandemic influenza modelling group government advisory panel, said the 21 June reopeningwould be a “really difficult decision”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “I think the question the government needs to answer, and I can’t answer this, is: if we show that cases may rise, and of course, hospital admissions and deaths may rise over the coming months, what kind of rise in those the government can cope with to allow society to reopen?
“Of course, if you delay that date then those rises will not be as severe. So, that’s the trade-off the government are going to have to have in terms of if they are willing to open up knowing there may be a rise if they delay that may lessen the rise, but of course then that impacts businesses all around the country, so I think it’s a really difficult decision.”
He said his “hope and belief” was that hospital admissions would not rise on the same scale as they did in January.
