June 17, 2021

expert reaction to latest COVID-19 case numbers as reported on the gov.uk dashboard

A comment from Professor Paul Hunter on the latest figures on the DHSC COVID-19 Dashboard.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, UEA, said:

“Although it is still a little too early to be sure, the rate of growth in the epidemic in the UK seems to have slowed somewhat in the past few days.  In the week ending today Thursday 17th June there were 58,830 new cases reported in the DHSC dashboard compared to the previous 7-day period (week ending 10th June) when there were 44,008 cases, an increase of 33.7%.  The equivalent data from a week ago was suggesting a 63.2% increase.  So, cases of COVID are still rising in the UK but apparently not as rapidly as they were a week ago.  From the daily DHSC data cases are now doubling every 17 days.  This is consistent with what is being reported by the ZOE symptom study.  These observations seem to conflict with the reports from the REACT study, widely reported today, which claimed that cases were doubling 11 days.  However, REACT study covered the period 20 May 2021 to 7 June 2021 so are already 2 to 3 weeks out of date.  The REACT study was undertaken at a time when reported case numbers were still increasing more rapidly than they have in the last week and was not able to give any information on trends in the past 10 days.

“On balance, it does appear that the epidemic in the UK may no longer be increasing exponentially.  Clearly the epidemic is not yet over, case numbers are still increasing but just rather more slowly than a week ago.

“Why the continued increase in the epidemic should be slowing more quickly than expected is not clear.  One possibility is that a high proportion of people not vaccinated have already had a natural infection.  Evidence for this comes from the latest ONS antibody survey which suggested that in the 2-week period 17th to 23rd May 52.8% of people aged 16 to 24 and 58.9% of people aged 25-34 had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.  Given that relatively few people in these age groups would have been vaccinated by then it does suggest a relatively high proportion would have had a natural infection to the point that natural and vaccine induced immunity is already starting to put a downward pressure on infection transmission.  Since the 23rd May the incidence of infection in these age groups has been quite high suggesting that even more will have developed immunity in the following three weeks.  This does not mean we will ever achieve herd immunity whereby the virus stops circulating in human society and becomes extinct in the UK population.  But such population immunity is substantially reducing transmission rates even if it is insufficient to achieve herd immunity.

“Taking all this data together, along with recent report on the effectiveness of both Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines at reducing risk of hospitalisation from the delta variant, there are significant grounds for optimism.  Hospitalisations will likely increase for a while and we would expect to see some increase in fatalities in coming weeks.  However, this should not be anywhere near as great as we have seen this last winter.

“Whatever the reason for this trend, if it continues then that would be very good news for the summer, especially as vaccination rates continue apace.  I am increasingly optimistic that this latest extension to restrictions should be the last.  Although we are likely to see case numbers increase in future, we are unlikely to see a surge of cases, hopitalisations and deaths anything like what we have seen this last winter again.  That does not mean that cases and hospitalisations will not increase in future, or even over the next few weeks, but that such increases will be rather more manageable than previously so allowing us to continue to ease current restrictions.”

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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