Covid D variant

You guys be careful over there! It looks like the AZ will give you some protection (60%) against catching Variant Delta if you've had both doses. That would mean you still have a 40% chance of catching it if exposed.  I'm hearing stuff about the Variant D+ (a new iteration of variant D) that is more evil still. Ewww.


Delta data

The Delta variant has been linked to a resurgence of COVID-19 in Nepal, southeast Asia and elsewhere, but its UK spread has given scientists a clear picture of the threat it poses. Delta seems to be around 60% more transmissible than the already highly infectious Alpha variant (also called B.1.1.7) identified in the United Kingdom in late 2020.

Delta is moderately resistant to vaccines, particularly in people who have received just a single dose. A Public Health England study published on 22 May found that a single dose of either AstraZeneca's or Pfizer's vaccine reduced a person’s risk of developing COVID-19 symptoms caused by the Delta variant by 33%, compared to 50% for the Alpha variant. A second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine boosted protection against Delta to 60% (compared to 66% against Alpha), while two doses of Pfizer’s jab were 88% effective (compared to 93% against Alpha).

Preliminary evidence from England and Scotland suggests that people infected with Delta are about twice as likely to end up in hospital, compared with those infected with Alpha.


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01696-3

Nan, please stop with the scaremongering.  We live in countries with vaccination rates in excess of 80% for first dose and second doses are happening.  They have just opened up the 18+ category so look for our vaccine numbers to exceed 90% easily. They are also rolling out boosters in September.

We still wear masks, we still social distance, we still are limited in numbers allowed to gather.

The USA is the one who is living an alternative reality.  A fellow expat is currently on holiday in New York State and is “loving the freedom of normal life”. We aren’t living a normal life in the UK.  We do not need someone who is living in a country without restrictions to tell US to be careful.   

Statistics can be sliced MANY different ways. I could pick different ones to share.

I spent some time at a vaccine clinic the other day and  it was full up with 18 year olds.  Didn't see anyone else over 50.  The kids are smart. 

I spent some time at a vaccine clinic the other day and  it was full up with 18 year olds.  Didn't see anyone else over 50.  The kids are smart. 

I genuinely have yet to know a single person who isn’t getting it.  Not one.  I know a few who hesitated, but they rolled up their sleeve.

Nan, your  link is talking about a PHE report in May, which I can't find but haven't really looked for, as there is this from PHE 13 days ago and on the gov.uk site 14 June 2021.

"New analysis by PHE shows for the first time that 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant.

The analysis suggests:

    the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses
    the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses

These are comparable with vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation from the Alpha variant.

Further work remains underway to establish the level of protection against mortality from the Delta variant. However, as with other variants, this is expected to be high."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaccines-highly-effective-against-hospitalisation-from-delta-variant

As said, the UK has a high vaccine take-up and we still wear face masks.

Israel has reinstated the requirement to wear face masks indoors.

I am not attempting to scare monger. I am genuinely concerned about you folks.   

Your media and your government selectively release information regarding this pandemic.  I haven't been able to read as much of the local news from there since I've been back, but I've been watching both BBC and Sky, and read some papers online, and have not seen them mention the lack of protection that the AZ jab actually is giving to people who have had only one (or even two) jabs against variant D and nothing about D+. What I see is an awful lot of  "remain calm, all is well" when it obviously isn't.  There are enough people there who are not particularly sophisticated who appear to believe whatever comes down from on-high.  That's a dangerous situation - you see them planning foreign vacations, mobbing sports events, whining about not being able to take a cruise, etc....

Yes, your lives are not back to "normal". It's very sad to see. It really is. I would imagine we'll have another wave of it here in a few months as well, if things go as they have. That's beside the point. The vaccines here have a better rate of effectiveness than the AZ, and, in NY, the one-dose rate is around 75% now.  I believe the two-jab rate is somewhere around 53% (not sure.) The infection "positive test" rate here is 0.36% from the last government post I received this week. So yeah, we pretty much are "back to normal" here - for a while. Even when the next wave comes rolling through, though - which it will - the vaccines should be protective up to about 85% if people got both of them.

Your government is stretching (from what I can tell) vaccines out longer than the period of time between the two doses as tested, to try to get (I assume) everyone to have one jab at least. That one jab of AZ will not give much protection to you against Covid D or D+. Some, but not a lot. Even two of the AZ doesn't give as much as one could hope. As, according to BBC figures, only about 62% of people there have had both jabs, that leaves about 40% who haven't and who are at increased risk. You may not know anyone who isn't getting the jab, but those figures do indicate that there are a lot of people who are not.

Your infection rate is on an upwards trajectory, while it is declining in other places. (I would assume those will start turning upwards, too, in time as well, as people are complacent.) Israel, who has one of the best (if not the best) vaccination rate has now re-mandated masks.  People in the UK seem (if the news is any barometer) more concerned with if they can have a holiday in Spain.

Again, I'm not trying to start a scare-wave. I just want to try to help you not blindly walk into a worse situation, which seems to be where things are going. Not that it's going to do very much good. But if it helps one person be more careful than they are now, it's worth the post.

So, sorry if I offend, but I'd rather offend than see you worse off in the future.

Nan, your  link is talking about a PHE report in May, which I can't find but haven't really looked for as there is this from PHE and on the gov.uk site 14 June 2021.

"New analysis by PHE shows for the first time that 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant.

I hope these stats are the accurate ones. But with the caveat that Hospitalization and being infected are two different things.  I may be under a mis-assumption here, but you can still get Long Covid (etc.) without being hospitalized. And you can still transmit it.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

Hospitalization and being infected are two different things.  I may be under a mis-assumption here, but you can still get Long Covid (etc.) without being hospitalized. And you can still transmit it.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

If it's the number of cases, have a look at worldometer. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The highest number of cases is the US.
The Total Cases per Million of the Population, when clicked on has the US in place 15 today (atm, the US figures for today are  not on that spreadsheet yet ) and the UK at place 50 today.

"Deaths per million of population" column when clicked on. You expect the numbers to be getting higher in the countries who have struggled to get vaccines but worryingly, the US are going up as the UK is going down. Why is that?
Today the UK is number 19 (1877) and the US who have yet to have their figure entered for today, are at number 20 (1860)

You guys be careful over there! It looks like the AZ will give you some protection (60%) against catching Variant Delta if you've had both doses. That would mean you still have a 40% chance of catching it if exposed.  I'm hearing stuff about the Variant D+ (a new iteration of variant D) that is more evil still. Ewww.


Delta data

The Delta variant has been linked to a resurgence of COVID-19 in Nepal, southeast Asia and elsewhere, but its UK spread has given scientists a clear picture of the threat it poses. Delta seems to be around 60% more transmissible than the already highly infectious Alpha variant (also called B.1.1.7) identified in the United Kingdom in late 2020.

Delta is moderately resistant to vaccines, particularly in people who have received just a single dose. A Public Health England study published on 22 May found that a single dose of either AstraZeneca's or Pfizer's vaccine reduced a person’s risk of developing COVID-19 symptoms caused by the Delta variant by 33%, compared to 50% for the Alpha variant. A second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine boosted protection against Delta to 60% (compared to 66% against Alpha), while two doses of Pfizer’s jab were 88% effective (compared to 93% against Alpha).

Preliminary evidence from England and Scotland suggests that people infected with Delta are about twice as likely to end up in hospital, compared with those infected with Alpha.

we are heading for another lockdown by end of July, assuming the schools dont close early. All the signs are there, rates are up all over and there are many reports of people who have had both jabs ending up in hospital with the new variant, schools all over the place are sending home classes. This is not scare mongering, its just whats happening, as long as people ignore advice and keep congregating, this aint leaving any time soon.

Nan, the important thing now is hospitalisation and death rates. COVID isn’t going back into the bag. There is no eradicating it. Especially as many parts of the world (not the UK and not even the US) have COVID and don’t have large portions of the population vaccinated or immune. The more infection we get, the more mutations we can get, true. But it’s not going away.

The best we, as a species, can do now is to try and minimise hospitalisation and death.

It sounds like you’ve got a different interpretation, and that’s fine.

We don’t get a choice of which vaccine we are given here. So I agree with the other posters, stop maligning AZ when we don’t get the option. When you spout anti-vaccine rubbish (and that’s what it sorta is), you scare people (in what’s looking like an ill-informed and needless way). Empathy, mate.

I’m also not sure what the point of your post was. It makes me worried FOR YOU.


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This isn't a pissing contest, Sirius.  It's about the infection, hospitalization, and death rate projections for the UK. Your trends are pointing up. In some cases kind of starkly, depending on which site you look at. I am less concerned with England than with Scotland, but England doesn't look all that good and the UK overall, the same.

As to the USA, it's always been a train wreck and I don't expect it to change anytime soon. The US rate will almost assuredly go up (probably exponentially) because there are huge tracts of the US where vaccine uptake is very low - even when the vaccine is easily available. I would expect the deep south and some west-of-the-Mississippi-but-east-of-the-Rockies states will be particularly ghastly this fall. The NorthEast, California, and some of the Rocky Mountain states have very good over-all immunization rates. (Again, with pockets of non-vaxxers in them.) I think Vermont is at 80% double-jabbed, but the population there isn't huge. There's not a lot the government can do to get people vaxed if they don't wish to be. The courts have decided that employers can require employees to be vaccinated, but there's a labor shortage here now so how many employers will actually push that issue is anyone's guess.

But as to percentages by population, I look at World-o-Meter a couple of times a week. It is of less value to me than seeing where the trends are going.

I thought you guys had access to more than AZ there. Sorry if that's not the case. I kept seeing all the reports comparing AZ to Pfizer, so I assumed both were available. Not meaning to malign the vaccine, but I have trouble processing why the UK government kept pushing for only it's use when it's had problems all through development, rather than putting their eggs across several vaccine baskets, to mangle a metaphor. There are a number of highly effective ones out there. (Without taking away from the efficacy of the AZ, others seem to have some strengths it does not have.)

As I said, I am really worried about you guys. In another mangled metaphor, it looks a bit like it's a case of shooting fish in a barrel. At least they should tell the fish to be ready to dodge, rather than pretending it's not going to happen. So empathy being relative, I do empathize. And I ~reallly~ would like to think that you're at least being given enough information to make your own informed decisions. It just doesn't look as if you are.

And with that, I'll close this out. Again, I'm not trying to upset anyone. I do worry about you. It seems so unfair, over there, that things are as they are, when so many actions that could have been taken to put the brakes on all this just didn't happen. I want you to be well, and wish that for you.

Goodbye to this.

Several vaccines are ‘available’ but each individual going for a vaccine does not get to choose which one they get. There is advice that pregnant women and those under 40 aren’t given AZ ‘if an alternative is available.’

AZ isn’t all bad - it’s being sold ‘at cost’ and that cost is much cheaper than many other available in ‘the West.’ It’s something like £3 as opposed to Pfizer’s £15.

Increased protection is better than none at all.

But yeah - people need to be a bit more cautious.


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Here, you get whatever vaccine you are given.  You generally don't have a choice of which one.  The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna ones are typically being used for younger people and/or those who are pregnant, while the Oxord/AZ is used for most everyone else.  The Janssen (J&J) vaccine has been approved, but is not available yet.

I had the Oxford/AZ vaccine, and am fine with it.  Yes, the Pfizer/BioNTech one is technically better but the Oxford/AZ is still effective enough to warrant getting if you have the opportunity.  To keep it in perspective, two doses of the Oxford/AZ vaccine are more effective against COVID-19 (Delta and Alpha variants) than your usual annual flu jab is against flu. 

I am concerned about early findings observed with the Delta+ VOC, but we don't have enough data to say anything (good or bad) with certainty yet.  In the meantime, we should all continue doing what we should have been doing since this all started - good hand hygiene, social distancing, mask-wearing, and so on. 

I’m not worried about us being fed garbage….  No worries there.     Luckily I’ve always known to not trust politicians. 

And yes, you are scaremongering.  If this was a thread with someone talking about a holiday to Spain, feel free to “protect us”.  As long as a person is comfortable with the level of risk they are taking, i follow the “not my circus, not my monkey” philosophy. 

Do you actually think the same variants aren’t in the USA?  The UK seems bad because we conduct more genome sequencing than anyone else.  So we *know* what’s trending. 

I’m not worried about us being fed garbage….  No worries there.     Luckily I’ve always known to not trust politicians. 

And yes, you are scaremongering.  If this was a thread with someone talking about a holiday to Spain, feel free to “protect us”.  As long as a person is comfortable with the level of risk they are taking, i follow the “not my circus, not my monkey” philosophy. 

Do you actually think the same variants aren’t in the USA?  The UK seems bad because we conduct more genome sequencing than anyone else.  So we *know* what’s trending.

Maybe YOU do.

I fail to see how what is circulating in the USA has anything to do with this thread. It's never been about what's going on in the USA. It's entirely about what's going on in the UK. Constantly bringing up "well, compared to the USA" is some serious deflecting behavior there. And since you guys are not in the USA, an entirely moot point as well.

So, since YOU are aware of what's going on, YOU will assuredly do everything necessary to keep you and yours safe, prepare for further restrictions, not be blindsided by what is coming.

However: https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-latest-news-grab-jab-195338611.html