HOW MANY ARE STILL CATCHING VIRUS?

THE number of people catching Covid has dropped dramatically since April, but last week it began to creep up once again.

Estimates suggest one in 65 people in England now have Covid, compared with one in 70 the week before. However, this is far below the number of cases seen in April, when as many as one in 13 had the virus.

Deaths continue to decrease, sitting at about 70 per day, but hospitalisations have also recently begun to rise. In the last week of May, the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid was at its lowest since July 2021 – fewer than 400 a day. But last Wednesday, hospitalisations rose to 600.

Experts say this is due to the rise of two new mutations of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The sub-types, labelled BA.4 and BA.5, are doubling in cases roughly every two weeks and could eventually replace the original Omicron sub-type.

They are thought to be slightly more resistant to vaccines and more infectious.

However, scientists tracking Covid are not too concerned by the latest changes.

‘We should expect a miniwave but nothing too dramatic,’ says Professor Francois Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute. ‘Covid is always going to rise and fall as new variants arise. We should expect this to be the norm from now on.’