Finds link between infections, hospitalisations and deaths had been weakening since Feb, but since late April, trend has reversed for hospitalisations
A person walks by closed shops in Blackburn on Wednesday. The UK government on Monday announced a four-week delay to lifting restrictions due to rise in infections caused by Delta variant. Pic/AFP
The number of people infected with coronavirus is increasing rapidly in England, doubling every 11 days, which coincides with the Delta variant of Covid-19 becoming dominant in the country, a new study reports on Thursday.
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The Imperial College London led Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT-1) analysis, based on over 100,000 home swab tests taken between May 20 and June 7, estimates that 0.15 per cent of people have the deadly virus, or roughly 1 in 670.
It found that the link between infections, hospitalisations and deaths had been weakening since February, but since late April, the trend has reversed for hospitalisations.
“We found strong evidence for exponential growth in infection from late May to early June in the REACT-1 study, with a doubling time of 11 days on average for England,” said Prof. Paul Elliott, director, REACT programme, Imperial’s School of Public Health. “This data coincides with Delta variant becoming dominant and shows the importance of continuing to monitor infection rates and variants of concern in the community,” he said.
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