LONDON – By the middle of this year, all adults in Britain should be offered a vaccine for Covid-19, which would be the fastest vaccination in a Western country on the road. But disease modelers advising the UK government recently made a sobering outlook: another 56,000 deaths in Covid-19 by next summer, even if the country is working against the fingers outside the lock and the vaccines.
The study points to the uncomfortable prospect that the virus, even with an effective vaccine, will still take the toll of society and that sometimes restrictions must be imposed from time to time to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Conclusion: Businesses and governments around the world must prepare to live with Covid-19, accepting that the virus will not go away, but also that barriers cannot continue forever if hospitalizations are reduced to manageable levels.
“We can not escape the fact that lifting the closure will result in more cases, more hospitalizations and unfortunately more deaths,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Monday as he took a slow and conditional path out. mapped the closure. “So there is no credible path to a zero-covid Britain or a zero-covid world.”
Future burden
Disease modeling by scientists advising the UK government suggests that Covid-19 is likely to cause more diseases and deaths, even after widespread vaccination once social health measures are relaxed.
Cumulative deaths (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
Cumulative hospital admissions (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
* All adults over 50, health workers and other priority groups will receive at least one dose of vaccine by 21 April
† All more than 70 and clinically vulnerable by 21 May two doses
Cumulative deaths (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
Cumulative hospital admissions (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
* All adults over 50, health workers and other priority groups will receive at least one dose of vaccine by 21 April
† All more than 70 and clinically vulnerable by 21 May two doses
Cumulative deaths (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
Cumulative hospital admissions (12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
* All adults over 50, health workers and other priority groups will receive at least one dose of vaccine by 21 April
† All more than 70 and clinically vulnerable by 21 May two doses
Cumulative deaths
(12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
Cumulative hospital admissions
(12 February 2021 – 30 June 2022)
* All adults over 50, health workers and other priority groups will receive at least one dose of vaccine by 21 April
† All more than 70 and clinically vulnerable by 21 May two doses
The warning does not undermine the value of a successful vaccination of vaccines. New data released on Monday showed that Britain’s vaccination program, which gave at least one shot to more than a third of the country’s 53 million adults, significantly reduced infections and reduced serious illnesses by even more.
But while the program paves the way for a gradual unlocking of the country over the next four months, the government does not treat it like a silver bullet. “Vaccination will reduce rates, but it will not get rid of it,” England chief medical officer Chris Whitty said on Monday. He added that Covid-19 “is likely to be a problem for the next few winters.”
Epidemiologists have long warned that Covid-19 is likely to circulate for years, or even decades, causing society to go a long way as with other endemic diseases such as flu, measles and HIV.
No vaccine is 100% effective and no population will be completely vaccinated. So a big unknown in a vaccinated society is what levels of infection governments will be willing to live with before imposing restrictions, said David Salisbury, former chairman of the World Health Organization’s strategic advisory group on immunization experts.
A Covid-19 patient who was treated at King’s College Hospital in London last month.
Photo:
kirsty wigglesworth / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
“It’s a political and societal issue about what’s acceptable,” he said.
The British government hopes that Covid-19 will be treated like flu in the long run. In the last five years, between 4,000 and 22,000 people die of influenza in England every year. In the past year, Covid-19 has killed 130,000 people in the UK
In the US, Covid-19 claimed more than 500,000 lives. It is estimated that between 22,000 and 61,000 people have died in Flu in the past five seasons, depending on the severity of the outbreak.
The entire adult population in England is expected to be offered a Covid-19 shot by the end of July. The government in England is currently planning to reduce almost all restrictions by four stages by 21 June. But even with a good uptake of vaccines, the virus will still be present. Children are not vaccinated, so the virus can spread freely among about one-fifth of the population. Not everyone will accept the vaccine.
To make matters worse, infection rates start from a very high base in the UK
Since Covid-19 variants are transmissible around the world, scientists are beginning to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster, and what they could mean for vaccination. New research says the key may be the vein protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood / WSJ
Model learners warn that this can lead to a jump in cases where restrictions are eased. With a vaccine that is 85% effective and three-quarters of adult Britons are vaccinated, about half of the population would be left vulnerable to the virus, according to modeling by Imperial College London because children would not be vaccinated.
If the restrictions relax during the summer, infections can increase in the fall. Even if the restrictions until August are not fully mitigated, Imperial College estimates that it could lead to 56,000 deaths by June next year. Modeling work by the University of Warwick, which also informed British government policy, reached similar conclusions.
Marc Baguelin, an epidemiologist at Imperial College, says the model is a basic case and could underestimate the uptake of the vaccine as well as its effectiveness in limiting the transmission of the disease. Other reasons for optimism include improving treatments for those admitted to the hospital with severe Covid-19, which especially reduces the risk of death for younger patients.
On the other hand, the virus can mutate to make the vaccines much less effective. Some vaccines have already shown reduced efficacy against variants identified in South Africa and Brazil. “It makes the prospect of a third wave much greater,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
The long-term effects of Covid-19 infection on younger people are still being understood. If they do harm, governments may be more careful about allowing younger people to resume their lives without vaccination or social distance.
Part of the problem is reflected in simple math. If 90% of the population takes a vaccine that is 90% effective, 19% remain unprotected, says David Sarphie, CEO of Bio Nano Consulting, which worked with Imperial College to develop Covid-19 modeling tools for governments and businesses to develop. “Nineteen per cent of the British population is 12.9 million,” he said.
A Covid-19 vaccination center in London this month.
Photo:
andy rain / Shutterstock
Successive waves of hospitalization and death in Western countries last year showed that the disease can cause significant diseases, even when relatively small numbers of people are exposed, said Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. .
“Even with the vaccines, there are still a significant number of people who will still be vulnerable,” he said.
Disease experts believe that the prospect of significant levels of serious illness and death, even in a population with widespread vaccine coverage, underscores the need for effective systems to test the virus and isolate those infected and their contacts . Governments need to work hard to improve vaccine coverage and overcome misinformation and hesitation, they say.
In the UK, British government advisers say that wearing a mask or working from home may need to be reintroduced in the winter to limit outbreaks. The government is investigating whether Britons will have to prove they were vaccinated or virus-free to resume activities, such as going to the bar or office.
The British Treasury, which underlines the potentially rocky path to normality, is likely to extend financial distress to the economy when the government’s budget is presented next week.
In general, the coronavirus will ‘be something we will live with’, said Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist and professor at Imperial College.
Write to Max Colchester at [email protected] and Jason Douglas at [email protected]
Corrections and reinforcements
With a vaccine that is 85% effective and three-quarters of the adult British are vaccinated, about half of the British population will be left vulnerable to the virus. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that half of the adult population would be vulnerable. (Corrected on February 23)
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