Summary - we can expect cases to go up in areas where there are unvaccinated - areas of higher deprivation, ethnic minority communities, inner cities, areas where there are young populations.
Everything depends on *how much* more transmissible B.1.617.2 is compared to B.1.1.7.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Public Health England have published their data for Variants of Concern.
- B.1.617.2 is becoming dominant with 2,111 new cases
- But also increases in these variants of concern
P1 (+30)
B.1.351 (+41)
- New variant under investigation AV.1
nb cumulative chart
... thread
Here is the cumulative chart on a log scale
And here is a heatmap of cases per week excluding colouring the B.1.1.7 ('Kent') variant
10% of cases reported today were detected in Bolton
(There is surge testing in Bolton, which may explain part of this.)
But cases are very high there with high case rates in children with a bit of a gap then up to 40-44 year olds. (This *could* indicate household transmission between children and their parents.) Fig: @PHE_uk
Increases in cases are not just confined to the under-60s (Fig: PHE dashboard) although the rate of increase is lower in the over-60s.
The overseas travel to amber list countries is potentially a mess. See this for Malta and Spain (currently on the amber list whose advice has changed).
The Foreign Office advice (which tends to be the advice that insurers use to determine whether a travel policy is valid) say this about Spain (on the left) and Malta (on the right).
"It is therefore highly likely that this variant is more transmissible than B.1.1.7 (high confidence), and it is a realistic possibility that it is as much as 50% more transmissible. ...
"At the end of last year, as JCVI set out their priorities for who should be vaccinated, the first priority was to vaccinate those most at risk of dying. A secondary priority –one that can be overlooked– included the possibility of vaccinating those at increased risk of exposure.
“Since then, we now know that Covid vaccines can reduce transmission. This is great news, and together with the lockdown, cases have fallen significantly.