Covid, what happens in the UK. Report Nyt
The country's grand experiment – opening with almost no restrictions – is facing its toughest test yet, according to the New York Times
Over the past four months, Britain has conducted a major epidemiological experiment, eliminating virtually all restrictions on the coronavirus, even in the face of a high daily rate of infections. Its leaders justified the approach with the fact that the rapid spread of vaccines in the country had weakened the link between infection and serious illness. The New York Times writes it.
Now, with cases, hospitalizations and deaths rising again, the effect of vaccines starting to wear off and winter looming, Britain's strategy of learning to live with the virus is undergoing the toughest test yet.
New cases surpassed 50,000 on Thursday, an 18% increase in the past week, and is the second time cases have crossed that psychological barrier since July. The number of people admitted to hospitals increased by 15.4% over the same period, reaching 959, while 115 people died from Covid-19, an increase of nearly 11%.
"Everything is hitting us at the same time," said Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London who has conducted a major study on the symptoms of Covid-19. "My opinion is that we are in a no man's land".
The sudden reappearance of the virus is a shock to a country that believed it had left the worst of the pandemic behind. After a remarkably successful vaccine deployment and the characteristic British resolution to move forward, the British have been challenged by a virus that is not ready to let go.
The problem is the fundamental trade-off that British officials made last summer: They decided they could tolerate a widely circulating virus as a price for the reopening of the economy, provided that only a small fraction of infected people ended up in hospital.
That laissez-faire approach has been looked at by the United States and other European countries as a possible model for how to chart a way out of the pandemic. The British have enjoyed a return to normalcy never seen in the rest of Europe, filling discos, theaters and sports stadiums – with few masks and little distance.
The percentage of infected people who are then hospitalized is still much lower than it was during the last peak of the pandemic in January, around 2% compared to 9%. But the NHS is already feeling the tension and with fears of a virulent flu season, hospitals face the prospect of a double hit this winter.
There is also evidence that more vaccinated people are becoming infected, a change from a few weeks ago when the bulk of infections occurred in schoolchildren, according to Professor Spector's Zoe Covid study. The government sent students back to school in September largely unvaccinated and without requiring them to wear masks.
"This problem, which was mainly confined to students, is now moving on to other generations," said Professor Spector. "The composition of the infected is a mix of unvaccinated young people and vaccinated elderly".
This, he said, mostly reflects the waning effectiveness of vaccines, which were introduced earlier in Britain than most other large countries and therefore are running out sooner. Nearly 80% of people aged 12 and over in Britain received two doses of a vaccine, but most older people received the doses six months ago or earlier.
Protection from two injections of AstraZeneca, Britain's most widely used vaccine, drops from 88% after one month and 74% after four to five months, according to an analysis by the Zoe study.
So far, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has rejected requests to introduce measures already taken in the past, such as making masks mandatory in enclosed spaces, or to impose new measures, such as vaccination passports for mass gatherings – a practice that France and other European countries have adopted.
Instead, the government is urging those who are eligible for boosters, particularly the elderly and other vulnerable groups, to register, seeking to restart a launch that had little of the speed or urgency of last winter's vaccination campaign.
Johnson said Thursday that "the infection numbers are high, but we are within the parameters of what the predictions were," adding, "we are sticking to our plan."
A day earlier, Johnson's health minister Sajid Javid warned that the number of cases could rise to 100,000 per day in the coming weeks, repeating a warning he first made in July when the government eliminated the most of the restrictions on social detente in a heavily promoted move that the British tabloids have called "Freedom Day".
Cases declined rather than increased in the days following the lifting of the measures, to the surprise of many epidemiologists, and this seemed to justify the government's strategy. It was during the summer, however, when the weather was warmer, schools weren't open and vaccine protection was higher.
Britain's daily number of infections is now three times that of Germany, France and Spain combined. These countries have caught up with, and in some cases surpassed, Great Britain in the proportion of people vaccinated. This has prompted many public health experts to urge the government to reconsider its aversion to restrictions.
"We are running far ahead of Europe," said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. "We should move to Plan B, which is where much of Europe is already located."
The government's plan B remains in the background for now. Since the start of the pandemic, Johnson has been reluctant to impose restrictions. His position is reinforced by pressure from a group of influential lawmakers in his conservative party, known as the Covid Recovery Group, who argue that there are broader costs to society stemming from draconian limits on economic or social activities.
While the government still recommends wearing masks in crowded spaces, lawmakers have reinforced the impression that normal life is back by eliminating them. At the Conservative party conference earlier this month, hardly anyone wore a face mask and they were rarely spotted in the House of Commons.
After Javid was pressured into the matter at Wednesday's press conference, some of his colleagues put on face masks the next day. But in the London Underground and other public places, they are less and less in evidence.
Taking credit for normalizing life, Johnson found it difficult to reverse course. Downing Street now hopes mid-term school holidays will lower infection rates. It is also planning an advertising campaign, using the slogan "Vaccinate, empower yourself, protect yourself," to urge people to call and remind them of the continuing dangers of the virus.
"The launch of the recalls was very disappointing," said David King, a former science advisor to the head of government. "What the UK government has done is sit down and say, 'We can't control the virus, so let's let it spread.'"
With him and other experts calling for tougher measures, many are expecting Johnson to give in soon and implement his Plan B for the winter. This would mean making face masks mandatory in some settings, urging people to work from home where possible, and asking them to show proof of their vaccination status to enter clubs and other public places (Scotland and Wales have already imposed similar measures. ).
Critics say this conforms to a familiar pattern. "The government is doing what the government has been doing all along: it hesitated and delayed and didn't really address the issues," said Gabriel Scally, a public health professor at the University of Bristol.
The government, he said, failed to come up with a convincing strategy to curb infections. There has been little effort to equip office buildings with better ventilation or to urge the public to wear face covers in crowded spaces and to use higher quality masks.
"They don't have a strategy to keep the virus under control and take the pressure off the NHS," Scally said, referring to Britain's National Health Service. "They put all their eggs in the vaccine basket and those eggs aren't hatching."
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/covid-che-cosa-succede-nel-regno-unito-report-nyt/ on Sat, 23 Oct 2021 05:55:33 +0000.