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Old 01-31-23, 06:09 AM   #10704
Jimbuna
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Covid cases up 50 per cent in 10 days as new highly contagious Kraken subvariant sweeps UK

Covid cases have shot up nearly 50 per cent in 10 days as the new, highly contagious, Kraken subvariant sweeps the country.

This Omicron subvariant doubled its share of Covid cases in the UK in the first two weeks of January, accounting for 11 per cent of new infections on January 16, according to data from GISAID.

And, if it follows the same trajectory as the US, its country of origin, its share will jump to around 40 per cent by Sunday, the data suggests.

In the US, Kraken – officially known as XBB.1.5 – grew from 12 to 42 per cent of cases in just three weeks.

The faster a new variant increases its share of infections the more contagious it is – and the more likely it is to fuel a new wave of the virus.

The rapid increase in infections in the past week or so in the UK comes just as cases had fallen by well over half in the first three weeks of January.

Hopes had been raised that the UK could be in for a spell of lower infection levels and that XBB.1.5 may not be spreading as fast as had initially been feared.

At that point, nine days ago, daily symptomatic cases had fallen below 100,000 for the first time in more than a year to stand at just over 85,000.

However, since then they have risen by 45 per cent to 123,265 on Saturday, according to the latest figures from the ZOE Health Study.

Professor Danny Altmann, of Imperial College London, is concerned that XBB.1.5, which is thought to have originated in New York, is behind the recent surge.

It is not just more contagious than previous variants, it is better at evading immunity built up from vaccines and previous infections because of differences in its makeup.

“I’m concerned that with XBB.1.5 we have another increment in transmissibility and immune evasiveness and our complacent reliance on established immunity may be misplaced,” he said. “We continue to be in uncharted territory.”

He is worried the public may not appreciate the threat Covid still poses and would like to see greater actions taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

“We have a country where uptake of the latest booster round in the over 50s has been poor, so we have a nation of rapidly waning defences. The situation in China reminds us that infection by Omicron subvariants is far from intrinsically mild in a poorly immunised population,” he said.

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, adds: “We can expect fluctuations in covid infections from the circulation of more infectious variants such as XBB.1.5.

“There is also the impact of waning immunity, particularly as only 64.5 per cent of those aged 50 and over have received the autumn booster.”

However, although cases are going up quickly they are not expected to go anything like as high as they did in the two peaks of last year, when daily infections reach 350,000, leaving about 5.5 per cent of the population at one point.

Professor Karl Friston, a virus modeller at University College London, meanwhile, believes “we have just reached the nadir of the current wave and cases will start going up again”.

He said: “These fluctuations, with a peak every few months, are what we can expect for the next year or so.”

Professor Friston’s modelling forecasts the next peak will be in late March. At that point, about 3.5 per cent of the UK population would have Covid.

Steve Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University, believes the return to school and work after Christmas may also be playing a role – an effect which can sometimes take a few weeks to filter through the system.

“I would be surprised if there hasn’t been an increase in prevalence caused by a return to schools and workplaces, especially given the current lack of mitigations,” he said.

Cases are also being kept high by a lack of general lack of awareness that Covid rates remain so high.

A study last week from Swansea and Cardiff Metropolitan Universities found that most people with Covid symptoms are behaving much as they normally do, taking few precautions to prevent passing the virus on to others.

Only one in six adults with respiratory symptoms took a test to determine whether it was Covid, a cold or the flu – all of which have similar symptoms – according to the survey taken in December and January.

This found that just one in 10 wore a mask and the same proportion isolated – while only one in 20 sought help from a doctor.

Confusion about symptoms, together with high levels of colds and flu over the winter, meant many people with respiratory illness assumed it wasn’t Covid – while the end of free testing, in a cost of living crisis, meant few people took tests to find out, researchers said.

According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, Covid infections continued to decrease in England, Wales and Scotland in the week ending 17 January 2023, and in Northern Ireland in the week ending 14 January 2023.

These tally with ZOE numbers which also recorded decreases for that period – but which are more up to date than the ONS numbers and show cases are now rising again.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/med...ecdfdce0d5d1d5
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