I don’t understand why infections are rising so sharply

[MissChanandlerBong22]

Just looking at the stats for my area. 60% of adults double jabbed. 80% have had one jab. Yet cases aren’t much lower than they were during the height of the pandemic in January.

I appreciate that hospital admissions and deaths are much lower of course. But I’m struggling to understand why cases are still so high. Is the virus spreading wildly among the 20% of unvaccinated adults? Or among the 20% of unvaccinated adults and the 20% of single jabbed adults? Or is it still circulating around everyone, but people who’ve been jabbed generally aren’t developing symptoms?

I know a lot of young people who have caught it after having the first vaccine.

"Both vaccines are 95% effective against dying."

About 1200 people die every day in the UK. Some of those will go into hospital before they die, with a condition that they will die of. If they have picked up Covid in their throats before or after admission, not unlikely considering sick people will need close attention from quite a few people, they will test positive for Covid, regardless of whether or not they are also unwell from the Covid. Therefore, when they die of the original problem, they will be recorded as a 'death with Covid'. They will be included in the 5% for whom the vaccine 'didn't provide protection'.

Many people whose relatives are deemed to be a Covid death (because they tested positive for the virus within the preceeding 28 days) although they are aware that the Covid played no part at all in the death, find this quite upsetting.

You presumably mean new cases per day? Actual absolute numbers are not as high as Jan.

I mean the ‘weekly new cases per 100,000’ figure in my area. But yeah, new cases in a specific timeframe rather than absolute numbers.

42,300 new cases today and 49 deaths, so definitely still growing exponentially at the moment.

Lets see..

Large numbers of children mixing, not wearing masks and bad at both hygiene and social distancing.

New variant the vaccine does not appear to help against all that much.

Vast numbers of adults mixing due to Terribly Extremely Important Sportsing Events - laughable mask use and SD.

No, absolutely baffling as to why case numbers are rising. It's a mystery.

I see case numbers for England through work, broken down by age demographic. It is overwhelmingly infections in children and young adults (under 25) which is currently driving the numbers up. The numbers of new cases in the over 60s, where vaccination coverage is at its highest, is tiny (60 over the last 7 days). The positive in this is that mortality risk is hugely age-linked, and there are very very few deaths in younger people: over the last rolling year (end June 2020 - end June 2021), there has been a total of 190 deaths in the under 25s. Obviously every one is a tragedy, but from a risk assessment perspective, that's out of almost 92,000 deaths in that period, or a 0.2% risk of dying if you're under 25. (In comparison, there were almost 54,000 deaths among the over 80s in the same period.)

Others have explained why they are rising. Remember that they would be much less if India had been on the red list at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh, and if there had been proper quarantine.

Another thing to take into account is that students have gone home. I live in a student area, and 3 weeks ago rates were hitting 1,200 per 100,000. They've dropped sharply with term end and are now at just over a quarter of that, but that group are now more evenly spread across the country and some will have taken covid home with them.

I agree with @amicissimma's point about deaths being designated 'covid' deaths if they meet the 28 day criteria even if they're not deaths from covid. You could also look at deaths where covid is mentioned on the death certificate (also not perfect). I think the best measure is excess deaths (which were low as of end of June) but these could be affected by, say, overwhelmed NHS services app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYmUwNmFhMjYtNGZhYS00NDk2LWFlMTAtOTg0OGNhNmFiNGM0IiwidCI6ImVlNGUxNDk5LTRhMzUtNGIyZS1hZDQ3LTVmM2NmOWRlODY2NiIsImMiOjh9

@newnortherner111

Others have explained why they are rising. Remember that they would be much less if India had been on the red list at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh, and if there had been proper quarantine.

No it would have just been kicked further down the line, unless it never arrived here at all which is unlikely.

So many people stating that vaccination doesn't stop spread. It does however reduce it:

immunisation with either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine reduced the chance of onward virus transmission by 40-60%. This means that if someone became infected after being vaccinated, they were only around half as likely to pass their infection on to others compared to infected people who weren’t vaccinated

@chamberofhorrors

There are 33,000 children in the UK suffering from Long Covid,

A few months ago the Times reported it was 80,000, so that might be a good sign?

@FedNlanders

Our school has several cases and has now closed. Think vaccined parents forget the kids are not vaccinated etc

I'd be surprised if many parents forget that, surely we are all aware every day that our children are at school that we're one phone call away from being contacted about a positive test

What sort of parents are forgetting?

The vaccination doesn't stop transmission it reduces the risk of becomh very sick

Did you not watch the cup final and Wimbledon? No one wearing a mask, every one shouting, no social distancing.

More of us test now, so we are bound to have higher results.

Thank you @ArseInTheCoOpWindow, I'll take a look. That sounds very promising!

Here’s a photo of it

Don’t forget there is a three week delay from infection to death.

Figures weren’t anywhere near so bad three weeks ago.

It’s not going to look pretty soon. But how bad would it have been without the vaccines?

I think the vaccines will be sufficient with this variant. I’m worried more about mutant strains over the coming winter.

@bossyrossy

Did you not watch the cup final and Wimbledon? No one wearing a mask, every one shouting, no social distancing.

No body who caught covid at either of those events could possibly have been included as a positive case yet

You're forgetting the incubation period and time taken to test and record the result

Sorry @amicissimma I missed a few posts, I didn't realise you were talking specifically about the paper

Definitely spreading like crazy amongst teens. DD had it last week (17) most of her friendship group now have it. My colleagues son also 17 has it. I am a nurse and barely any of my team have lost a day off due to COVID since this all began yet today there is not a single nurse on duty as we are either off sick or isolating because of our teens. Our work is having to be triaged and covered by other teams (community).

The data we receive is top line only. Until we can see more detail - ages of those testing + and their vaccination status, we can only speculate. It is the same with deaths. We don’t know again about vaccination status and other co-morbidities that might have an impact on the death.

So what do you suggest?

A) vaccinate all those of an age for whom the vaccine is approved.
B) continue with mask wearing in schools
C) ensure continued testing, particularly in schools, colleges and universities,
D) maintain social distancing
E) encourage outdoor meeting only with limited numbers indoors
F) continue with self isolation when close contact is identified
G) surge test in areas where the virus is rising a greater speed than elsewhere
H) subject those who are travelling to a strict quarantine upon return home.

Lots of people venturing out, who have barely been out in 15 months.
And going out regularly too.
Bound to up the cases.

Trying to not say too much, but there was a big international event, which has made cases soar in our area.