Re: what happens next (Sun's question)
I guess we can use Warwick modelling as a starting point. The relevant section is 2.2.2 "Timing of Step 4":
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/993358/s1288_Warwick_RoadMap_Step_4.pdf
We know all the modelled scenarios so far have not been particularly reliable but they provide a general direction of travel.
When the government officials currently say that "data looks good", they mean that the hospital admissions have so far been running lower than the so called "optimistic scenario". However, all of the alternative forecasts still assume:
- Exponential growth in cases continues until the vaccination/acquired immunity ceiling is reached;
- Hospital admissions (England only) rise to anywhere between 900 and 2,700 per day at the end of July - early August.
The predicted scale of the third wave for all three measures is a function of historical cases, vaccine uptake, vaccine efficacy and the competitive advantage inferred for B.1.617.2 (Fig. 1). All regions except London are predicted to have large numbers of infections in the third wave (equivalent or more than in wave 2 for both the default and cautious efficacy assumptions, Fig. 18 top left), with the North East and Yorkshire suffering the highest burden. As expected we observe smaller levels of infection for the optimistic efficacy assumptions giving the smallest outbreak sizes while the cautious assumptions give the largest.