MUTANT FEARS
Covid hospitalisations TRIPLE in Indian variant hotspot Bolton in three weeks
COVID hospitalisations have tripled in one of the UK’s Indian variant hotspots, Bolton, over the past three weeks.
Sources say 43 Covid patients have been hospitalised and are in the town’s NHS trust; a three-fold increase on the 12 that were receiving care on May 10.
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Bolton emerged as a hotspot for the Indian variant in the last few weeks, with surge testing deployed and locals asked to be vigilant.
According to , the large town in Greater Manchester is now recording more than 400 Covid cases per 100,000 people.
The rapid rise in case numbers follows a period of exponential growth of the Indian variant over the past month.
It typically took several weeks for cases to turn into hospitalisations, due to the lag between someone catching Covid, and falling seriously ill with the virus.
Meanwhile in Bolton, locals think people travelling home from the Covid-ravaged country may have brought the Indian variant to the town, before it became a hotspot.
Some have suggested some of those returning to the UK didn't carry out the ten days of self-isolation to stop the spread of the virus.
Mohammed Khan, owner of a travel agency in the Greater Manchester town, : "It’s very selfish. People just think about themselves and their own pleasure.
"Just because you can’t go to a restaurant or a cinema for a few months, you want to go to a completely different country.
"I don’t want a third lockdown. It’s a team effort. We all have to be in it together."
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There have been 780 deaths linked to Covid in the town, with 982 positive tests in the week up to May 16.
The Indian variant was found in a cluster of three neighbourhoods - Deane, Rumworth and Great Lever - which house around 33,000 people in tightly packed streets.
"Around here there could be between two and eight in a two-bedroom house," said John Openshaw, 73, a Deane resident.
"If you are talking about those numbers and Covid kicks off in a house, it is going to spread and spread."
Just over 40 per cent of people living there are from a British-Indian and British-Pakistani background.
But experts think the surge of the Indian variant has been fuelled by poverty, dense housing and multi-generational homes in the areas, rather than ethnicity.
Many households have multiple generations in the same home, with more than a quarter living in poverty.
A local shopkeeper added people had been following the rules in the first lockdown, but "plenty" have broken restrictions recently.
He said "People have been coming out when they should have been isolating."
Despite concerns about the rise in cases, Number 10 has said the “majority” of people being hospitalised with the disease were either unvaccinated or had not been for both jabs.
And it's a positive sign for the UK with hopes we are on track for the day of freedom on June 21 when all restrictions are expected to be dropped.
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It seems that "Freedom Day", on June 21, is set to go ahead as findings showed Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines both give a high level of protection after two doses.
Pfizer was 88 per cent effective after two jabs while AstraZeneca proved 60 per cent effective.
Both vaccines were 33 per cent effective against symptomatic disease from the Indian variant three weeks after the first dose, compared with about 50 per cent against the Kent strain.
Professor Susan Hopkins, PHE's Covid-19 strategic response director, said the data trend was "quite clear" and heading in the "right direction".
The data has raised hopes that hospital and death rates will not reach the peaks of previous waves.
Further data on the Indian variant shows the strain is now dominant in close to 15 per cent of authorities across England.
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This was almost twice as many as the previous week.
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The mutant virus has overrun the previously-dominant Kent variant in 44 places, up from 23 the week prior.
It was now responsible for 90 per cent of Covid infections in Blackburn, and eight of ten in the hotspots of Sefton, Bedford and Croydon, as well as Bolton.
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