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
Now, we know that B.1.617.2 is starting to become the dominant variant from the sequences data from @sangerinstitute - they exclude travellers and surge testing. Here's a chart showing this that I used in my @SkyNews interview yesterday
So we should now start to think about what could be the *next* variant that will cause significant problems (whether in competition with B.1.617.2 or outcompeting it). So let's *exclude* B.1.617.2 (as well as B.1.1.7) from out heatmap colouring.
Other variants are being detected
If we keep plotting cumulative graphs, the lines will look pretty spectacular without telling us much.
So we really should look at the number of cases *per week*. We can see B.1.617.2 starting to rise exponentially in recent weeks.
We can see this more clearly if we plot the proportion of variant cases detected each week (dark blue is the Kent variant; orange is the B.1.617.2 ('India') variant
And here is some analysis of AV.1 and variants more generally
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.