Thread by @DrEricDing

Denmark🇩🇰 even more worried than ever about new #B117 variant—B117 cases increasing 70% a week **despite strict lockdown**, says Denmark’s CDC genome sequencing *every single case in the country* for mutation. By contrast, 🇺🇸 sequencing 0.3%. #COVID19 🧵
washingtonpost.com/world/europe/u…

2) “We’re losing some of the tools that we have to control the epidemic,” said Tyra Grove Krause, scientific director of Denmark CDC @SSI_dk

3) “Because it can spread more easily, it can also quickly overwhelm medical systems, turning previously survivable bouts with the virus into perilous ones if hospitals are full and medical care is limited.

4) “Danish public health officials say that if it weren’t for their extensive monitoring, they would be feeling a false sense of confidence right now.”

5) “Without this variant, we would be in really good shape,” said Camilla Holten Moller, co-leader of the State Serum Institute group modeling the spread of the virus.
“If you just look at the reproduction number, you just wouldn’t see that it was in growth underneath at all,”

6) “But the British variant is spreading so quickly that Danish authorities project it will be the dominant strain of the virus in their country as early as mid-
February. That would put Denmark ahead of US, CDC warned Friday that #B117 variant could dominate by March

7) Danish officials say that as a result, daily coronavirus cases there could quadruple by the beginning of April. Charts from the public health institute project that in the worst-case contagion scenarios, even with a strict lockdown in effect, cases would skyrocket.

8) Under better-case scenarios — if the variant turns out to be less contagious than thought, or if the country can get caseloads down even further right now — the outbreak would stay more under control while they administer vaccinations.

9) this was an earlier analysis from last week. It’s already outdated. It’s much higher than modeled now.

10 Here is the model with and R of 1.1 and R or 0.9 currently and how the new #b117 variant (light purple) quickly taking over assuming little to no community vaccination.

11) Here is with some degree of vaccination of 1 mil per day and 95% vaccine efficacy after 2 doses (delivered on time!) but notice how much difference if we have R as 1.1 vs 0.9. It’s exponential math— quickly adds up. But if we don’t keep under 1.1, we are not gonna stop #b117

12) here is the full CDC @CDCMMWR paper on the #B117 in the US. It will take over for sure. But controlling total cases depends on our overall efforts to keep R under 1. cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…