Share this page!

Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
Twitter logo
31 May, 9 tweets, 4 min read
THREAD latest on B.1.617.2 variant in England:

B.1.617.2 (1st discovered in India) is now dominant in England. Here is a thread summarising latest PHE report and Sanger local data.

TLDR: it is NOT good news. 1/7
Firstly, B.1.617.2 is now dominant in England.

This data excludes traveller data and surge testing as much as possible.

In absolute numbers, B.1.617.2 ("India") overtook B.1.1.7 ("Kent") about 15 May.
PHE report estimates a few days earlier. 2/7
B.1.617.2 is now dominant in almost every region of England.

Even NE and Yorks are catching up very fast. 3/7
The PHE report last week also looked at "secondary attack rates" - chance that a close contact of a confirmed case will also test positive (NB contacts with no symptoms not necessarily tested)

They estimate that person with B.1.617.2 is 67% more likely to infect a contact. 4/7
There are still reasons why this might be higher other than just higher transmissibility - but note this estimate has got *higher* since previous report, as more data has come in.

Also, SAGE's bad scenarios start from 40% more transmissible variant. 5/7
Reported cases in England have risen 27% in last week. Hospital admissions to 26 May have risen 15%.

Cases are going up steeply in many local authorities.
6/7
We need to stop obsessing about 21st June and start worrying about where we are *now* and how we can get cases down *now*.

Oh and massively discourage international travel - not least to protect other, less vaccinated, countries from this variant. 7/7
PS:
PHE report here:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

Sanger data here:
covid19.sanger.ac.uk/downloads

I'm also kinda sick of people minimising this the whole time. The speed of spread has been so quick.
PS they don't exclude surge testing any more.now that b.1.617.2 is dominant

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Prof. Christina Pagel

Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @chrischirp

Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
31 May
THREAD Some back of the envelope examples about how things could get difficult even with vaccination.

This is *no* replacement for the proper SAGE Spi-M models but gives you the idea. (11 tweets)
Between Oct & early Jan there were about 2.3 million confirmed cases of Covid, 135K hospital admissions & 28K deaths. Hardly anyone was vaccinated.

If we had a similar situation now but WITH vaccination then cases would be lower & admissions (~25K) & deaths (~3K) MUCH lower.
I think this is what most people have in their minds when they don't believe it could get bad this summer.

And if cases on same or lower scale then that is true - vaccination (particularly of vulnerable) protects us & the NHS.
Read 12 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
30 May
THREAD on variants & borders:

SAGE warned in Jan that a red list border policy "geographically targeted travel band" was unlikely to keep variants out.

This is because we don't know in advance where the *next* concerning variant is coming from.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
1/11
UK spent Jan & Feb making red list policy about variants discovered in Brazil & S Africa. But wasn't paying any attention to the situation, in say, S Asia.

SAGE also said that red list policy works best if implemented very quickly & if in countries with low UK traffic. 2/11
India has strong travel links with the UK and started its awful surge in March. By 24th March, the Indian govt was warning about a new fast spreading variant.

UK waited until 23rd April before India was added to red list - and it did work to reduce travel. But too late. 3/11
Read 11 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
29 May
THREAD on covid and schools:

This week, the ONS infection survey which tests a random representative sample of people in England every week, showed early increases in school age kids.

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati… 1/7
Weekly Public Health England data from confirmed cases also shows cases highest in 10-19 year olds.

Cases rose in 5-9 & 10-19 yr olds in March when schools went back. They didn't end April / early May prob cos of low community case rates.

But now they are rising again. 2/7
Above were rates for whole of England.

If we look at the three local authorities with highest levels of new variant B.1.617.2, we can see school age kid rates are *really high* - and higher than their equally unvaxxed 20-24 yr olds. 3/7
Read 7 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
26 May
SHORT THREAD on Scotland & Covid:

Cases in Scotland have been going up since early May.
Cases are rising most steeply and most notably in children and young adults, but have now started rising in older groups as well (but, presumably much reduced by vaccination impact).

chart from @TravellingTabby travellingtabby.com/scotland-coron…
Many argue that it's ok cos the link between cases & hospitalisations has been broken cos of vax.

Regardless that this ignores long covid or potential for further mutation, this is NOT TRUE.

The link has been weakened but NOT broken.

Scottish admissions have started to rise.
Read 6 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
25 May
The latest Wellcome Sanger data on local spread of B.1.617.2 (variant of concern 1st seq in India) dropped yesterday. It tries to get at community cases by removing cases from travellers & surge testing.

All regions going up - inc NE & Yorks now.

Flattest in London & SW.
The SW has v few cases and most B.1.617.2 cases are travellers so it's not very useful data.

For London, we need to understand why that is flatterning more than everywhere else.

Also - local "lockdowns" a bit late if aim is to stop spread to other areas!
Oh and here is the overall England proportion of sequenced cases that are B.1.617.2, B.1.1.7 and other variants up to 15th May.
Also from Sanger institute.

Now almost 50% (consistent with Saturday's PHE report).
Read 4 tweets
Prof. Christina Pagel Profile picture
24 May
SHORT THREAD ON SCHOOLS:
As we open up, schools are becoming the biggest places where large groups of unvaccinated people mix.
This makes them more vulnerable to outbreaks if local cases increase.
But data on what is happening in schools is sparse.
Firstly, twice weekly lateral flow device tests (LFDs) - the government's main mitigation in secondary schools now that they've removed masks - are not really being done.

There should be about 8 million LFDs a week in secondary schools. But we are only seeing 2 million.
Numbers picked up a bit after Easter holidays but are now back to where they were in mid April & at ~25% of expected tests (and that's not counting school staff)

Regardless of how effective an intervention it is, this is the government's main strategy. And it's not being done.
Read 11 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @chrischirp has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @chrischirp!

Read all threads by @chrischirp

:(