Europe’s COVID surges show controllable

Over the past few weeks, the Delta coronavirus variant has dashed hope of many Americans looking forward to celebrating a “hot summer” and the end of the pandemic.

As a health expert warning in june, the highly contagious Delta variant has been hit particularly hard in states with low vaccination rates, fill hospitals and morgues but back again to the darkest days of the pandemic. And unlike previous variants, the new data suggests that some vaccinated people infected with Delta – while fully protected from severe illness – can still spread the virus to others. This has prompted the CDC to advise that people get vaccinated in areas with a higher chance of transmitting the virus. should continue to wear a mask in indoor public spaces.

Big questions still about the extent to which “breakthrough” cases are spreading Delta. But now there is growing fear that Delta will be an unstoppable force.

However, the message from experts watching the Delta wave in Europe is more encouraging, suggesting that the usual rule still applies: Vaccination and strategies like wearing masks indoors where public and avoiding crowds can reduce the number of cases.

Meanwhile, some observers have look at what happened with Delta in the UK and India, where the variant was first discovered and speculated that Delta’s misery in the US could be at least short-lived, whatever we do to limit its spread. In both countries, the dramatic increase in cases was followed by a similarly rapid decline, suggesting that the fast-spreading Delta variant usually self-ignites fairly quickly.

There are two major problems with this view. First, if we just let Delta take our course, the cost of lives and overwhelmed hospitals will be very high.

Lauren Ancel Meyers, a computational epidemiologist at the University of Texas at Austin and director of UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, told BuzzFeed News. “You’re going to overwhelm your healthcare system.”

Second, if you look at the variety of Delta curves seen across Europe, it’s far from clear that there is a typical fast-burning Delta wave. And in countries with rapid growth and decline, changes in people’s behavior – rather than the inherent characteristics of the Delta variant – seem to be a big part of what turned the tide. .

Dig deeper into the reasoning behind the various Delta waves seen across Europe, and a more hopeful message emerges: Scary, the Delta variation seems manageable. Vaccination is our best weapon, but the modest social distancing measures that have worked against other, less transmissible forms of coronavirus can still help significantly.

It makes no sense in comparison India’s Catastrophic Delta Wave with people in the US, UK and other European countries, experts say. It’s not just India’s huge population Most are unvaccinated at a time when the Delta variant ravaged the country in April and May, but surveillance and testing were so inadequate that it was unclear whether the curve recording new cases accurately reflected the number of people infected. or not.

But if you look at the Delta waves seen so far in European countries and the US, the curves are very different. In the chart above, only England and the Netherlands rose and fell rapidly, while the rest of the teams rose more slowly. In Germany, the Delta curve is hardly a blip.

While the UK has been exposed to the Delta variant before others, largely due to people traveling to and from India, the timing in which Delta established its dominance cannot explain the difference. differences for other countries are displayed.

It is difficult to discern the exact reason for the difference between the Delta waves of European countries. But transmission will depend on how many people have some immunity – through vaccination or previous coronavirus infection – and the patterns of behavior that encourage spread.

Of the countries indicated, France has the lowest vaccination rate, with 49% of the population fully vaccinated (the US is slightly ahead, at 50%). Meanwhile, the UK has the highest rate, with 57.3% of the population fully vaccinated. The other European countries shown are all tightly packed from 53.2% to 54.2%. Thus, vaccination levels do not seem to explain the large variation seen in the Delta curves across countries.

One clue that differences in people’s behavior played an important role is that Germany has maintained Stricter social distancing control than most of its European neighbours, requiring people who do not live together to stay 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) apart and wear medical masks when in public and in stores.

Meanwhile, looking at two countries that have experienced rapid ups and downs in cases caused by the Delta variant, provides strong hints that large gatherings of people play an important role in each wave.

The UK’s rise seems to have been accelerated by Euro 2020 football tournament when fans gather in pubs and houses to watch the matches. In both England and Scotland, the increase in new cases increased dramatically a week or two after the respective teams played their first matches, only to reverse a few weeks after each team dropped out.

The Scotland team was eliminated very early. But in England, which made it to the final, the watch parties continue until July 11.

The timing of the subsequent peaks is exactly what epidemiologists would expect if the gatherings to watch the matches strongly spurred the Delta wave. Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, UK, told BuzzFeed News: “It took two weeks for a signal to show up clearly in the data.

Unlike previous spikes in the UK, cases are predominately male, matching the demographics of people watching the matches. And a new research from Public Health Scotland reinforces the idea that the UK’s pronounced Delta peak is largely due to a decline in social distancing during tournament watch parties. “At its peak, more than half of the cases reported in Scotland either attended a EURO 2020 event or were in close contact with a person who attended,” the researchers note. the researchers noted.

Most of those infected are quite young and do not become seriously ill. That, combined with the UK’s rapid progress with vaccinations over the past few months, means that hospital admissions peaked by a fifth less than in the UK in January, at the height of the wave. with the Alpha variant. And while COVID deaths have increased slightly, now only around 90 people a day die from the disease across the UK, compared with more than 1,200 at the height of the Alpha wave.

The rapid change of cases in the UK has puzzled some experts, who have predicted infections will rise to new heights after “Freedom Day” on 19 July, when the Prime Minister Prime Minister Boris Johnson removes remaining coronavirus restrictions in the UK, allows pubs and restaurants to operate normally and removes all mask requirements.

While the pathologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London has predicted that the new cases can increase to 200,000 a day, the seven-day rotating average of new cases peaked at less than 50,000 a day around Freedom Day before the decline began. Over the past few days, the decline in the number of cases seems to have leveled off, and it is not clear where the UK’s Delta wave begins here.

Another European country with clearly fast rising and falling rates is the Netherlands. About 10 days after the Dutch government removed almost all remaining coronavirus restrictions on June 26, cases began to increase. “It was really a peak of cases among young people,” Tom Wenseleers, a biostatistician and evolutionary biologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, told BuzzFeed News. As in the UK, this did not lead to a large increase in hospitalizations or deaths.

Even so, on July 9, the country abruptly changed course, closing nightclubs and restricting bars and restaurants to designated seats 1.5 meters apart. The Dutch government said: “Most infections have occurred in places with nightlife and large parties. in a statement Announce new restrictions.

The Dutch Delta wave peaked within two weeks of the new restrictions. If this rapid change is indeed driven primarily by the closing of nightclubs, it provides another encouraging message that the Delta variation can be contained through subtle changes. more economical in behavior rather than shutting down completely.

Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told BuzzFeed News: “The UK and the Netherlands should be an advisor against despair. “We don’t need to fathom the Delta variant.”

Hanage is not alone in believing that experience in European countries shows that modest precautions such as wearing face masks in indoor public spaces and avoiding large gatherings can make a big difference in terms of health. the appearance of the Delta variant.

“As behaviors change, with or without formal policy changes, in a way that protects you from infection, we will see these changes,” Meyers said.

As the chart above shows, states with lower vaccination rates so far tend to experience more severe Delta episodes.

So in the long run, stepping up vaccinations in places where fewer people get vaccinated remains the best hope for beating the American Delta variant. But while vaccination rates are fastest growing In the states currently experiencing the most severe Delta surge, there’s still a long way to go – and those who get their first shot today won’t have strong protection for several weeks.

When asked at a White House press conference on Thursday what the US needs to do to combat its Delta wave, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, supported the idea that the measures The controls that helped reverse previous rallies are back in action.

“You do it in the immediate sense right now by mitigating,” says Fauci. “Mitigation is something you’ve heard from the CDC recommendations, regarding concealment, regarding avoiding crowded situations where you could potentially spread the virus increasingly. ”

Fauci added: “The ultimate goal of all of this is vaccination. But if the US can mitigate the spread in the short term and increase vaccination rates in the long term, he said, “We will turn around the Delta spike. I will assure you that it will happen”.