Why is the UK getting more cases than France?

[TheYearOfSmallThings]

The UK started vaccinating before France, and there has been a lot of vaccine resistance in France. But their Delta wave was smaller, and continues to decline after peaking, whereas the UK's has plateaued. Life is fairly normal in both countries now.

I'm sure there is an explanation for this that I'm missing, and I'm hoping this board is the place to find it?

As in the reason for the spread of delta.

@TheYearOfSmallThings

The UK started vaccinating before France, and there has been a lot of vaccine resistance in France. But their Delta wave was smaller, and continues to decline after peaking, whereas the UK's has plateaued. Life is fairly normal in both countries now.

I'm sure there is an explanation for this that I'm missing, and I'm hoping this board is the place to find it?

Masks for all children age 6 plus and air purifiers in classrooms

Masks in other places

They understand the airborne nature of covid

We are a bit thick / don’t care because we’ve been told it “only” kills vulnerable people

Ashamed to be British

Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think school summer holidays are longer in France, so will have effectively served as more of a "firebreak".

@TheYearOfSmallThings

The UK started vaccinating before France, and there has been a lot of vaccine resistance in France. But their Delta wave was smaller, and continues to decline after peaking, whereas the UK's has plateaued. Life is fairly normal in both countries now.

I'm sure there is an explanation for this that I'm missing, and I'm hoping this board is the place to find it?

The French government are doing some basic infection control for airborne viruses.

The U.K. government isn't.

Delta has affected France, it is most of the cases, but it coming that much later on in the vaccination campaign made a big difference. Possibly having to show evidence of a negative test every time to go up to the bar would mean more testing/catching positives early and quarantining.

Spain never had to close it’s schools last academic year, despite having high cases and 90% ish delta variant they’re back down to less than 5k daily cases after peaking at 30k or so in the summer.

Both countries have vaccinated over 12s and have vaccinated more of their population than the UK. Both still wearing masks indoors (I hate masks but they do serve as a reminder to observe other distancing measures). I don’t understand how the UK hasn’t reached 70% total population vaxxed yet, even without 12-15 year olds. There was such momentum early on in the year.

Graph for comparison:

@PersephoneJames 80% of eligible people have had both doses, the lower figure includes children that aren’t eligible

If you look at hospitalised cases France have currently about 10k with about 2k in icu.

This is 100% purely down to testing

Worldometer shows we test double the numbers France does (per million population) and triple Spain

It’s ridiculous how much we test

When do their schools go back?

Princess that graph means nothing

We are testing way more - sometimes 4x more than some of those countries

They could in reality be in a much worse situation

Over 50 kids in my kids school tested locative this week on the first week back and not a single one was symptomatic

Bet no other countries are doing such ridiculous amount of testing

you have to bloody look for it and test to even know you have it - absolutely crazy

The U.K. has a higher population density and a lot of villages are filled with commuters so there is a lot of mixing and delta can just rip through us.

France is twice the size of the UK; its population density is much lower.

@Lockdownbear

When do their schools go back?

Same time as England. They have returned with stringent rules on isolation and masks including primary. They have kept schools open for much longer with only an initial 12 week closure. If 1 case in primary the whole class isolates.

We won't see the effects of the approach we have now taken for at least a month in terms of hospitalisations/deaths will we?

@LilyPond2

France started vaccinating children aged 12+ from 15 June. As that age group socialise a lot, preventing cases in that age group through vaccination could potentially have a big impact.

Are France giving both vaccines to over 12’s?

I feel strongly that we should have done the same over the summer before they returned to school.

Why are France further ahead with vaccines when they started much later than we did and there was so much hesitancy to start with?

They have kept up restrictions and mask wearing rules.

@mrshoho Scotland's are back about a month so that will have contributed to the UK spike but it seems to be levelling off a little. We have kept masks for secondary kids but it will be the usual "wait and see what happens in England before following"

Just look at today's figures as an example:
France has a similar population to UK: their cases are about a quarter of ours another deaths about 2/3rds. Both countries have been stable enough for long enough to mean that deaths aren't behind cases. Suggests to do that France have missed 12-15 thousand cases. Not necessarily a bad thing. They're probably too mild to bother identifying. But we are identifying nearly all cases.

Similarly, Spain. Population just over half of The UK's. So to make their daily figures comparable to ours, double them - approx 11,000 cases and 140 deaths. Which makes their deaths about the same as ours per capita but their cases 20,000 down on where they 'should' be to match the deaths. Though their death rate could still be coming down, they had much higher figures not long ago. So maybe not as good a comparison as France.

The US on the other hand. Population around 5 times bigger than ours. So divide their daily figures by 5 to get roughly 30,000 cases and 350 deaths. And they are doing similar amounts of testing. So case figures comparable but deaths quite a bit higher- maybe due to more vaccine hesitancy?

I find the comparisons interesting. Don't know if there's any point to them or not though.

Ugh, autocorrects in the 1st paragraph. 'and their' not 'another'
And
'to me' not 'to do'

The only reasonable answer that I can see, is that we are testing so many people who are getting positive results that our European neighbours aren’t testing. (kids and anyone who has been near anyone who has had a cough, and we have half the criticlly ill of France.

There are currently around 100 Covid deaths per day in France despite them having a much lower case rate. Why are people so fixated on the number of cases?! We test loads so we find loads…

According to Statista there have been 53 deaths in France in the last 7days. (0.79 per million.)

And 753 in the U.K. (11.27 per million.)

www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

Don’t know, but almost certainly something to do with Boris Johnson!

@elbea that’s just playing with statistics to make numbers look better - people who aren’t eligible can still get it and pass it on and cause big problems for schools struggling to stay open.

@PrincessNutNuts that's not correct