It will be “a difficult winter”: the word of Downing Street. The increase in new coronavirus cases, at the highest since July, worries the British government, which “is monitoring the data very closely”. On Monday, daily infections touched 50 thousand (49,156).
If infections continue to increase at the current rate of 16% per week, the fear is that it will soon return to the record level of 68,000 cases per day reached in January, at the peak of the spread of the English variant.
A new emergency
Great Britain, the first European country to launch the mass vaccination campaign with great success, is now facing a new emergency on the threshold of winter. It is not only infections that increase but also hospital admissions, which increased by 6.9% in the last week to 5,561, and deaths, which increased by 11.4% to 869 in the same period.
The increase in cases is attributed to several factors such as the reopening of schools and the end of preventive measures such as social distancing and mandatory masks. Infections have increased exponentially among high school students and their parents, especially because the British government has decided not to make the use of masks compulsory in the classroom and not to impose restrictions of any kind.
The probable causes of the infections
Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted on a “return to normality” and gave the green light to the reopening of all clubs, including discos. Another factor is that many people were vaccinated months ago and their level of protection is now lowering, which is why more and more people who have received two doses are still testing positive. Studies show that immunity begins to wane after five to six months. For this reason, many experts are now asking for the booster campaign for a third dose, for now limited to the elderly, to be accelerated and for all children over 12 to be vaccinated. For now, only 15% of children over 12 have received a dose of the vaccine, because vaccination is voluntary and many parents disagree. In general, the vaccination campaign, which started off well, has slowed down in recent months.
“Britain is no longer at the top of the European vaccination rankings and is losing points, especially for teenagers,” said Neil Ferguson, professor at Imperial College and member of the Government’s expert advisory board, today. It is no coincidence that the numbers are dropping in other European countries where masks and social distancing are still mandatory ».