A new report from the Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team provides a comprehensive overview of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, severity, hospitalisation and intervention impact during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic across England.
Researchers developed a mathematical model for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 using data from daily recorded deaths, polymerase chain reaction testing, hospital admissions, bed occupancy, individual patient outcomes, contact surveys and serological surveys.
The key findings from the report are as follows:
- At the beginning of the first wave across all regions in England except London, 1.3 per cent of infected individuals died and 3.5 per cent of infected individuals required hospitalisation.
- Infection fatality ratio (IFR) was down to 0.8 per cent at the end of the first wave because of improvements in clinical management.
- IFR was lower across all of London at 0.9 per cent even after adjusting for demographics.
- IFR was higher among elderly care home residents compared with community residents aged >80 years (35.9% vs 10.4%).
- The national lockdown was responsible for bringing the reproduction number below 1 consistently in the first wave.
- Introduction of the lockdown a week earlier would have decreased the death toll during the first wave from 36,700 to 15,700.
Dr Marc Baguelin, one of the authors of the report said: “This work highlights the importance of an early intervention in order to reduce the number of cumulative deaths. This model also quantifies for the first time the dynamics of SARS-Cov-2 in the UK between care homes and the wider community and shows how difficult it is to mitigate the impact on the most fragile.”
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