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Public Health England (PHE) has released the latest surveillance data on SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern or under investigation.
Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, said:
“One has to be a bit cautious in interpreting this data as it can take a couple of weeks for positive samples to be typed and the results published.
“The 32% increase in all cases sound very alarming but this week’s 54,268 new cases being reported compared to 50,824 the previous week is only a 7% increase in new cases over the previous week.
“Also not all samples are sequenced so the proportion examined varies from one week to the next making it very difficult to get a clear picture of total cases.”
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chair, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge, said:
“The latest PHE data show that the majority of the 257 people who have died with the Delta variant are over 50 and have had at least one vaccination – nearly half have been fully vaxxed. But this is exactly what we would expect with high coverage by a very effective – but not perfect – vaccine.
“Many more fully-vaxxed over-50s have died with the Delta variant (118) than unvaxxed under 50s (21), but this is expected due to the very strong risk-gradient with age: an unvaxxed 30 year-old has a lower risk than a fully vaxxed 60-year-old.
“Around a quarter of the deaths are in unvaccinated over-50s, who presumably will have been offered the vaccine. Communities with lower vaccine uptake will be hit hard in current wave”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof David Spiegelhalter: “No COIs.”
None others received.