The Delta variant, which is now accountable for most coronavirus infections in England, isn’t driving a surge of latest hospitalizations there, based on knowledge launched by Public Well being England on Thursday.
Though the variety of coronavirus infections has risen sharply in latest weeks, hospitalization charges stay low. Of each 100,000 new circumstances in England, simply 1.9 are admitted to the hospital.
That price, which is predicated on knowledge collected between June 21 and June 27, is similar because it was the earlier week and stays significantly decrease than it was throughout England’s surge final winter. In January, the hospitalization price peaked at 37.2 hospital admissions for each 100,000 circumstances.
The info recommend that international locations with excessive vaccination charges are unlikely to see main surges in hospitalizations from Delta. Almost 75 p.c of adults in England — together with 95 p.c of those that are 80 or older — have had a minimum of one shot, based on the company’s numbers.
Earlier this month, England had delayed its plans to reopen after Delta caused a spike in new cases.
Case rates are highest among young adults, who are the least likely to be vaccinated, Public Health England reported. (Among those under 40, just 34 percent have been at least partially vaccinated.) Young people are less likely to develop severe Covid-19, which could explain why the spread of Delta has not resulted in a wave of hospitalizations.
Breakthrough infections, or those that occur in people who are fully vaccinated, tend to cause mild or no symptoms.
At a separate news conference on Thursday, the European Medicines Agency noted that vaccination should provide good protection against Delta.
“We are aware of the concerns that are caused by the rapid spread of the Delta variant and all the variants,” Marco Cavaleri, the head of biological health threats and vaccine strategy at the agency, said at the briefing. Given the research that has been done so far, the four vaccines that are approved in the European Union — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Jonson — all seem to protect against the Delta variant, he said.
In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that the Pfizer vaccine was 88 percent effective at protecting against symptomatic disease caused by Delta, a performance that nearly matches its 95 percent effectiveness against the original version of the virus. A single dose of the vaccine, however, is much less effective.
“Expediting vaccination and maintaining public health measures remain very important tools to fight the pandemic,” Dr. Cavaleri said. “In particular, making sure that vulnerable and elderly people complete their vaccination course as soon as possible is paramount.”
