Elliott, Paul and Eales, Oliver and Bodinier, Barbara and Tang, David and Wang, Haowei and Jonnerby, Jakob and Haw, David and Elliott, Joshua and Whitaker, Matthew and Walters, Caroline E and Atchison, Christina and Diggle, Peter J and Page, Andrew J and Trotter, Alexander J and Ashby, Deborah and Barclay, Wendy and Taylor, Graham and Ward, Helen and Darzi, Ara and Cooke, Graham S and Chadeau-Hyam, Marc and Donnelly, Christl A (2022) Dynamics of a national Omicron SARS-CoV-2 epidemic during January 2022 in England. Nature Communications, 13 (1): 4500. ISSN 2041-1723
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Rapid transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has led to record-breaking case incidence rates around the world. Since May 2020, the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study tracked the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England through RT-PCR of self-administered throat and nose swabs from randomly-selected participants aged 5 years and over. In January 2022, we found an overall weighted prevalence of 4.41% (n = 102,174), three-fold higher than in November to December 2021; we sequenced 2,374 (99.2%) Omicron infections (19 BA.2), and only 19 (0.79%) Delta, with a growth rate advantage for BA.2 compared to BA.1 or BA.1.1. Prevalence was decreasing overall (reproduction number R = 0.95, 95% credible interval [CrI], 0.93, 0.97), but increasing in children aged 5 to 17 years (R = 1.13, 95% CrI, 1.09, 1.18). In England during January 2022, we observed unprecedented levels of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially among children, driven by almost complete replacement of Delta by Omicron. [Abstract copyright: © 2022. The Author(s).]