Imperial College London Study Shows That England Witnessed Record COVID Infections In October 2021 And Trend Is Continuing To Rise!
Source: UK COVID-19 News Nov 07, 2021 3 years, 2 weeks, 16 hours, 25 minutes ago
Despite being one of the few countries in the world with the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate, a new study by researchers from Imperial College London has shown that COVID-19 prevalence in England rose to its highest level on record in October, led by a high numbers of cases in children and a surge in the south-west of the country.
Credit: Tolga Akmen-AFP/Getty Images
Not only are the unvaccinated being vulnerable to the new surges that are caused by a variety of new emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants such as the Delta subvariant like AY.4.2 and other Alpha sub-variants, but breakthrough infections are also occurring in high rates among the vaccinated with some resulting in hospitalizations and even death.
The study team found that nearly 6% of school-aged children had COVID-19, although there was a drop in prevalence towards the end of the study's period coinciding with the closure of schools for half-term holiday.
However, the study team warned that despite that dip, rates had doubled in older groups compared to September, a concerning sign as the government races to give booster shots to the most vulnerable.
The study findings were published in a preprint format.
https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/92366
Dr Paul Elliott, the Imperial epidemiologist who leads the programme, told Thailand
Medical News during a media briefing, "We did see a doubling in that group, and clearly that's the worry. It's being driven from the young school age but it is going right across the whole population."
The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has re-opened England's economy and is bidding to live with high levels of the coronavirus, claiming that vaccinations have largely broken the link between cases and deaths compared to last winter.
This new Imperial REACT-1 study estimated overall prevalence at 1.72% based on swabs collected between Oct 19-29, compared to 0.83% in September.
Dr Elliot said that the figure was higher than the study's previously recorded high in January, though he noted that the study had not been in the field last December, when last winter's wave might have peaked.
Interestingly, the study findings show there was nearly a four-fold increase in prevalence in the south-west, the area impacted by an error at a private lab that resulted in an estimated 43,000 people wrongly being given negative PCR test results.
Dr Elliott said that it was a "viable hypothesis" that the problems at the lab, run by a firm called Immensa, had contributed to the rise.
Alarmingly, the study findings also revealed that 10.3% of sequenced swabs were of the Delta sub-lineage AY.4.2, which is under investigation by UK health authorities due to its growth in recent weeks.
The Delta AY.4.2 sub- lineage is worrying many experts as it is now thought to be between 15 to 18% more transmissible and is able to evade vaccine immunity coupled with the fact that it also leads to higher viral loads due to faster replication
capabilities which indirectly could lead to more disease severity.
Just as worrying are other emerging Alpha sub-variants, including one that was found to have a signature mutation from the Gamma variant!
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-german-researchers-identify-new-immune-evasive-sars-cov-2-alpha-variant-sub-lineages-wreaking-havoc-in-europe-besides-the-delta-sub-variants
The UK has reported another 155 daily COVID deaths and a further 30,693 infections in the latest 24-hour period, according to government figures.
The number of deaths is down on the 193 reported yesterday, and the number of cases is also lower than the 34,029 that were confirmed.
Things in the United States are no better despite a concerted effort by the Biden administration to project an illusion that his vaccination programme is making things better in America. As of Thursday at 8 a.m. EDT, the unofficial U.S. COVID toll reached 46,335,944 cases and 751,559 deaths, increases of 82,263 and 1,128, respectively, from this time a day ago.(Its not the unvaccinated alone that is being infected but similarly to other countries, even the fully vaccinated are experiencing breakthrough infections with some even getting hospitalized or dying still though not a huge proportion.)
As expected, despite garbage being spewed by certain ‘medical experts’, pharma executives and mainstream media that the COVID-19 pandemic would come to an end in early 2022,
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/dr-scott-gottlieb-covid-cases-in-us-should-peak-in-january-.html, we at Thailand Medical News strongly believe that we are only still at the beginning stages of what is going to be a long but a gradual increasingly deadly pandemic that will keep on attacking mankind in constant waves with always new potent variants while depleting and damaging the immune system of those who survive each surge in what is known as viral priming so that every next surge will even be more deadly.
For more on the anticipated fun times ahead for Britain and the United States-the epicenters for most of the control of the COVID-19 narratives and the mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.
