The Delta variant is surging, and the government’s failure to act quickly will likely cost lives
A new coronavirus variant that was first sequenced in India has been doubling about every eight days in England since early April. The Delta variant is now dominant in England, and according to a recent risk assessment from Public Health England (PHE), it has a substantially increased rate of transmissibility compared with the previously dominant variant Alpha, which was first sequenced in the UK. Having just a single dose of vaccination is less effective against Delta, and it may lead to a surge in hospital cases.
We always knew variants were a risk to England’s roadmap out of lockdown. In January, the science advisory group Sage warned that England’s red-list border policy of “geographically targeted travel bans” was unlikely to keep new variants out, not least because we didn’t know where the next one would come from. England spent the winter trying to keep out the Beta variant, first sequenced in South Africa, and the Gamma variant, first detected in Japan in travellers from Brazil. The effort mostly succeeded, but the government’s red-list policy entirely missed the rise of a dangerous new variant in India.
