@DayBath
It's an interesting thread by Deepti Gurdasani. It raises the question of whether cases are spiking in schools because this variant is easier for children to catch and spread, or is it perhaps an environmental cause as they are one of the few remaining places that people can mix without masks or socially distancing. A sort of chicken or egg question really.
I think that's worth following up, but I don't think it's just that it's easier to catch and spread.
Looking at heat maps I'm comparing Blackpool, where they don't have as much of the new variant, with Wandsworth in London where it's pretty rife. I chose these because round their worst part they're similar numbers/100k.
Blackpool had a bad patch in October where they were pretty high, but you can see the 10-14s is lighter, getting dark blue but no worse, 5-9s is lighter still and 0-4 is patchier, but I'd say on average lighter still.
Wandsworth stays light green until mid December in 0-4 and 5-9 but then gets progressively darker into the purple colour by now, and the 10-14 are darker again, having stayed green until mid November.
If it was simply down to being in school, then we should have seen similar in Blackpool at their worst.