The regional Director of Public Health England for the North West has said that there has been a “rapid rise” in cases of the Indian variant in the region
Andrew Furber told Sky News this morning
“We are seeing a rapid rise in cases in Bolton and in Blackburn, and we are now seeing a spread further afield to Burnley,So we are beginning to see it spread much further throughout the North West.”
Testing and vaccinations have been “turbo-boosted” in these areas, he added
“We need to see people “literally in their thousands” turn up to get the jab,but also emphasised that:
“We do need to learn to live with this virus,We will have this virus circulating in the autumn, into the winter, through to the spring next year.”
Easrlier this morning Professor Adam Finn, a JCVI scientist from the University of Bristol, told the BBC that Britain can achieve population immunity despite the spread of the Indian variant,
He told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “The question is a bit of a moving targets because of course, we’re now confronted with, yet again, another version of the virus and we’re still in the process of understanding how infectious it is.
“The proportion of the population and the evenness with which you give them the vaccine, ultimately will determine when you achieve population immunity for any infection. I’m optimistic that we, particularly in the UK, with the high coverage we’re achieving and the extremely effective vaccines we’ve got that we can achieve population immunity.”
