- As in many other places, the Delta variant is driving a surge in Covid-19 cases in the UK.
- But the death toll in the UK has not soared as it did during the previous surge.
- The United Kingdom has fully vaccinated 72% of its population, and even if the number of cases increases, the number of deaths has declined.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
This Highly infectious Delta variant The surge of Covid-19 is being stimulated globally.
But in the UK, 71.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, and the new surge has not brought the same number of deaths as the past wave of coronavirus.
British government Coronavirus dashboard Daily counts of positive Covid-19 tests and deaths. A comparison of these two data sets shows how the relationship between infection and death has changed over time.
Throughout July, the ratio of deaths to cases in the UK remained far lower than at any time before the pandemic.
At the beginning of the first wave of outbreaks in the UK last spring, the ratio of deaths to cases soared. Similarly, in the wave of last winter, this proportion has risen significantly again.
The most recent surge in the UK began in June. By July 1, the 7-day average of new cases had increased to nearly six times that of June 1. The new wave generates almost as many cases every day as the surge in January in the United Kingdom. But the death toll has hardly increased.
The low rate may be because the vaccine has proven to be very effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalization and death.
Matthew Howwood/Getty
A study in the United Kingdom found that two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines are 88% and 67% efficiency respectively, The Covid-19 that prevents symptoms comes from a Delta variant, the dominant strain in the UK.
Both Hyundai and Johnson & Johnson said that laboratory tests have shown that their vaccines are also very effective against Delta, although peer-reviewed studies on the true effects of these vaccines in the face of Delta have not yet been published.
Overall, the ratio of deaths to cases in the UK has been declining over time, which shows that the effectiveness of widespread vaccination is obvious. At the beginning of February, only 1% of the British population was fully vaccinated, and about 25% of the population received a dose of the vaccine. During this period, there were an average of 5 deaths for every 100 new cases in the UK.
Now, 71.8% of people in the UK are vaccinated against Covid-19 — 88.4% have at least one dose — and the death toll ratio is almost zero.
