Yes I thought vaccination rates were comparable. So wonder what is fueling the climbing rates?
My own school has reintroduced masks etc because of the high levels of Covid.
Izzy x
I think you’re looking at an old data set there Tim - this is the most recent:
Actually by percent of population France surpassed the UK 2 months ago.
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Info from Zoe covid app.
Estimated at over 76,000 cases
The over 12 rate in France I think is higher in France.
1st Dose
UK = 85.8%
France = 88.1%
2nd Dose
UK = 78.8%
France = 85.7%
Just watched Dr J. Campbell’s update and those figuers are echoed and herd immunity doesn’t seem to be occurring.
I’m in lycée, random testing and of course for those who want it, practically everyone is vaccinated and obviously we all clean our hands desks computers etc and wear masks all the time and maintain distance and open windows indoors and particularly in class. The nurse wanders about randomly taking temperatures. We haven’t (as a school) had any pupils or colleagues who have tested positive for covid since the rentrée, and none of my pupils has even been a cas contact.
No idea what they do in collège but many primary schools are now mask-free depending on the département.
ps forgot to say we don’t have to prove we are vaccinated with the pass on our telephones when we come to school but I don’t suppose anyone would mind.
It’s more than 60% though - and I’ve seen that claim compared with “over 85% in France” which is just plain wrong.
The UK has fully vaccinated 45,297,231 and 49,335,154 have had one dose which is, for a start 68% and 74% of the whole population - not 60% as claimed.
BUT no nation is routinely vaccinating children under the age of 12.
The population aged 12+ in the UK is 56,775,880 (source). That gives a rate of 79.8% and 86.9% of eligible individuals fully/partially vaccinated.
It is true that e.g. France has overtaken us - 75.8% of the whole population and 88.1% of the eligible population have had at least one dose which is only just ahead of the UK. The gap widens for both doses though with 73.8% and 85.7% (whole population & 12+ respectively) of les Français fully vaccinated.
Not often reported in UK - still pedalling World beating.
UK rates have slowed to a crawl though with only about 30k/day new vaccinations and 28k/day 2nd doses. Scotland and Wales also seem to be leading the take-up at present, perhaps because they both have a “Covid Passport” scheme going which England has not. Some groups (the over 50’s mainly) are basically fully vaccinated, I’ve had my booster so about as protected as I can be short of catching Covid (an experience I’m keen to avoid).
Covid has dropped off the media radar almost completely - might be why @Corona had no idea that we’re still getting around 40k per day positive test results (I hesitate to say cases but given that the bulk of PCR tests are done on people who are either symptomatic of have had a positive lateral flow test and we’re probably now missing asymptomatic cases it’s probably reasonable to suppose we have at least that many per day).
It has been obvious from the start that the government does not care about safety, just that we go out and spend our money.
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And far too many deaths - this should be widely reported in UK
Yes a bit out if date, corrected later.
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Because of the Gov lack of clarity its difficult to know how many have actually gone from other causes. Some would have been expected but delayed due to other reasons like a lack of flu last year, staying in so not falling all sorts of reasons heart etc, just being lumped in to the numbers. At least I know my Mum wasn’t one of them.
Overall the numbers are so high but regional, poorer areas of the midlands and poorer areas generally.
Whether that has anything to do with poor diet etc who knows at this stage.
Worse than that, unfortunately.
The native R rate for Delta has been quoted as 5.08 - if vaccination were 100% effective you’d need (1-1/R) = 80.3% of the population vaccinated.
Unfortunately the vaccines are only 64% or so effective at preventing infection so even 100% vaccination rates would not get the R rate down below 1 - just on the maths you’d need 80.3/.64 = 125% vaccination take-up which is clearly impossible.
That said the UK rate is kind-of static so R is, de facto, about 1.0 so there is probably just enough behaviour change still happening to hold the numbers but as people relax or the cold weather forces them into closer, indoors contact it could easily rise in the next few months.
Eventually we must in the UK reach the point where so many have safely had the virus, immunity is strong enough, the so called herd immunity surely?
Doesn’t look like it.
Thanks Vero, that’s interesting. I work in a secondary school in the UK so similar age group (although, of course, we have students from 11 to 18 so some of French collège age). We had stopped masks but continued with hand sanitising and ventilation of classrooms but we are now back to masks in communal areas and distancing. It’s somewhat depressing.
Perhaps, then, there are less asymptomatic cases being detected in schools in France. This will probably explain some of the differences in numbers. There are about 11 million school age children in the UK and if the trend in my school is typical then that’s about 1 million who could be off school with Covid. That’s a lot!!
Just seen the article below. I guess my school is not typical then.
Hoping the upcoming half-term will slow things down a bit.
Izzy x
An explanation of why Covid rates are higher in the UK. Views?
Izzy x
I was 1 of only 2 of us wearing a mask in the supermarket today. We will have to wait and see how we lab rats fair long term, we will either build up immunity better than our EU friends or we wont and will reduce our population accordingly.
The booster jab seems key to me as well as reintroducing mandatory mask wearing indoors. Doesn’t France and elsewhere also face rising cases as vaccine effectiveness wanes? Hopefully they are all looking at what’s happening in the UK and understanding the causes.
Izzy x
France doesn’t seem to be (yet) but booster jabs are certainly happening here and there is a lot more mask wearing indoors and in public gatherings. I think the combination may be keeping the cases low. Of course we’ll have to see how that evolves over the winter…