The risk of meeting a Covid-infected person in your everyday life this week is slightly higher than it was last week, and remains Very High. Around 1 in every 71 people in England have Covid – this is also the rate for Bucks.
As an example of the risk of catching Covid, a typical busy supermarket will have between 3 and 6 infected people breathing out virus which you could catch.
Bucks and England appear to be still in a “summer lull”, similar to 2022. We have not yet found any firm evidence of a major increase in infection rates.
There are two main reasons for this lull. Most of the population have now already caught a variant of Covid in the last few months, and a new variant has not yet come along. This means that the temporary immunity that you get from catching Covid is protecting most people from a fresh infection. That will change, of course, when the next new variant arrives which can avoid the temporary immunity given by past variants.
The other reason we are in a Covid lull is that the warmer weather is reducing indoor contact, and universities and colleges have already broken up for the summer. This reduces the spread of Covid.
This lull will not last. A new variant is bound to appear soon, simply because the Covid virus never stops mutating to get around people’s immunity. Like The Terminator, Covid will always be back. We are still confidently predicting that infection rates will increase as we move into the late summer and autumn.
BuDS continues to recommend that disabled and clinically vulnerable people avoid indoor spaces unless they are wearing a filter mask (FFP2/3). For more advice on how to avoid catching Covid, use this link.
This data is based on the Zoe Health Study for Covid-19, adjusted to take account of its limited coverage. To learn more about this, use this link.
To understand more about our Covid risk levels and what they mean, use this link.
For more Covid information and help, please contact BuDS and we will be happy to help.