Most of the people currently in hospital with the Covd-19 coronavirus have not had a vaccine, a leading scientist and Government adviser has said.
Imperial College London Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling was instrumental to the UK locking down in March 2020, also said that the Indian variant - now being called the Delta variant - is "doubling across the country about every nine days".
And it is not yet known how and increased numbers of cases will translate into hospital admissions.
He told the Today Programme: "It’s important to say that most people being hospitalised at the moment with this variant, and with any Covid variant, are unvaccinated.
“So, it’s clear that the vaccines are still having a substantial effect, though it may be slightly compromised.”
He said they are still waiting for data on how much the Delta variant can evade the immunity which protects people against being admitted to hospital.
“The data being reported relates to unvaccinated people, so if you haven’t been vaccinated there appears to be, both from Public Health England data and from Public Health Scotland data independently, about a two-fold increased risk of hospitalisation,” he said.
“We know at the moment that the Delta variant, the Indian variant, is doubling across the country about every nine days with some variability place to place.
But we haven’t fully seen the effect of what happened May 17 step three, the relaxation of restrictions, come through into that data, so we expect that to accelerate even more.”
He said it is still unclear how increased numbers of cases will translate into hospital admissions.
“We’re seeing an uptick in hospitalisations in the North West, in a couple of other areas, but it’s just too early to say, and that’s critical because we do expect vaccines to give a high level of protection still, but exactly how high it’s critical to what size third wave we might see,” he said.
