Home
+
Published : 31 Oct 2021, 12:16 AM
Cases have stayed at high levels since then, with more than 20,000 new cases recorded each day. There are almost 9,000 Britons hospitalised with COVID-19 — the highest level since March, when the United Kingdom was in the midst of a long national lockdown.
Unlike the rises and falls of previous periods of infection, the most recent wave shows the positive impact of Britain’s vaccination rollout: Far fewer COVID hospital admissions and deaths have followed the rise in cases than in previous waves. Still, health experts contend that the ongoing hospitalisations and deaths are burdening overstretched hospitals and could be reduced with basic measures.
Tim Spector, a professor at King’s College London, who has been leading a major study of COVID symptoms since the start of the pandemic, said it is hard to predict whether high levels of transmission will continue. One reason for the uncertainty, he said, is that public behaviour, led by government guidance, is very different now than in previous surges. “In past waves, there’s been a general panic and reduction in mobility,” he said.
“The trouble is that the government has gone from ‘operation fear’ that we had a year ago to ‘operation complacency,’ ” Spector said. “It’s a massive switch.”
England has some of the loosest coronavirus protections in Europe since July 19, when it lifted all legal restrictions, including mandatory mask-wearing. In a recent survey by YouGov and Imperial College London, 21% of Britons said they rarely or never wear a face mask in public — about four times as many as in Italy and Spain.
Despite the extended surge in cases, the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recently said that behaviours in Britain are closer to pre-pandemic levels than at any time since March 2020.
The current surge is being primarily driven by high levels of infection in school-age children, with more than one-third of all recent cases being reported in those younger than 15.
Unlike most of Europe, the UK was slow to approve vaccines for adolescents. The recommendation of a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds was not announced until mid-September — weeks after many students had returned to school from summer vacation. So far, just 21% of 12- to 15-year-olds are vaccinated in England, compared with 80% of adults.
Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London, said the lag in approval of vaccines for 12- to 15-year-olds was an enormous mistake.
“We’ve had an extra 10% or 20% of kids infected when they didn’t need to be, and we’re dealing with the hospitalisations and deaths that came from that,” Pagel said. “And with long COVID, even if that affects 5% of them, that’s a lot of kids.”
These infections have started to spread into older age groups in recent weeks, and overall in England, about 20% of beds in intensive care units are filled with COVID patients. Experts warn that the National Health Service could face intense pressure this winter.
Modelling conducted by Airfinity, an analytics firm, shows that a double hit of COVID and flu cases could overwhelm UK hospitals by early 2022, with a severe flu season leading to more than 6,000 hospitalisations per week for flu alone. In addition, the NHS is trying to clear a growing backlog of 5.7 million surgeries, many of which were cancelled during the pandemic.
Experts agree that COVID vaccine booster doses — an additional shot given once the protection from the initial inoculation starts to decline — are going to be essential to reduce demand on hospitals in the coming months. A recent study from Public Health England found that protection against symptomatic infection drops significantly in the five months after a second vaccine dose.
The study found the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing symptomatic infection from the delta variant dropped to 70% after five months from 90% two weeks after full immunisation. Waning immunity was more severe for those who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine; five months after being administered, its effectiveness dropped to 47% from 67%.
The UK was among the early front-runners of the global vaccine rollout. It approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in December, in both cases weeks before the European Union did. Its early deals with manufacturers also secured supplies of vaccines, allowing the UK to protect millions of its most vulnerable residents while the EU engaged in a public dispute with AstraZeneca over delivery delays.
But this early lead is now coming at a cost, with a much greater share of the population at risk of waning immunity, adding urgency to its rollout of booster doses.
Booster doses are currently being rolled out to everyone ages 50 and above in Britain, as well as health care workers and the clinically vulnerable, six months after their second doses. So far, 6.7 million booster doses, or enough to cover 10% of the total population, have been administered.
The UK’s high case rates had been an outlier in Western Europe in recent weeks, as infections in France, Germany and Spain all plateaued at low levels. But rising cases in Germany hint that Britain’s woes could spread across the continent this winter, with fears that waning immunity and increased indoor mixing will fuel further infection.
The British government has so far resisted calls to invoke its “Plan B” for suppressing infections over the winter. That protocol would include vaccine passes for nightclubs, mandatory face coverings and a push for those who can to work from home.
At a recent news conference, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said although the NHS is under increasing pressure, he believed the current lack of restrictions remained appropriate. “If we feel at any point it’s becoming unsustainable, then we won’t hesitate to act,” he added.
Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, council chair of the British Medical Association, in a recent statement pressed for more urgent action. He said the NHS is heading into winter with a “depleted and exhausted workforce” and called on the government to enact its “Plan B” measures now to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
The government is also facing mounting criticism after 43,000 people were mistakenly informed that they had tested negative for the virus. A private laboratory that was processing the tests in Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands of England, has suspended operations after an investigation by the UK Health Security Agency. Most of the recipients of the false negatives were based in southwestern England, which now has the highest case rates in the UK
Problems at the laboratory came to light when people with symptoms reported discrepancies between positive lateral flow tests — a type of rapid test that can be taken at home and has been made widely available by the government — and subsequent negative PCR test results. Regular lateral flow testing is a critical part of the government’s plan to get through the winter without reintroducing restrictions.
The latest data shows that almost 1 in 4 confirmed cases in England are first caught with a lateral flow test, which experts say is an important tool to find asymptomatic infections. Millions of these rapid tests are conducted in homes, schools and workplaces across the country each week, but only a fraction of the results are reported to the government.
Case rates have fallen in the UK in the past few days, although it remains to be seen whether this trend will continue once children return to school next week after a midsemester break. Pagel said she hoped the brief vacation from school would serve as a break in transmission. Still, she warned, “Even if cases do start declining, they’re not going to go down super fast. If we added in masks and home working, we could make them go down quicker, so why aren’t we doing that?”
She added: “Last winter was awful, and we shouldn’t get anywhere near that level before raising alarm bells.”
© 2021 The New York Times Company
