it's similar to SARS so 50-80%. But we don't have to vaccinate everyone to get a handle on this. You have to take into account that many recently infected will still carry antibodies and the likelihood of reinfection causing severe disease is going to be small. Certainly not a reason to enforce vaccination or draconian measures on any population. The facts are speaking for themselves in the Uk.

The facts are, as yet, incomplete and cannot be established until the worldwide pandemic is over.

Erring on the side of caution with a rapidly mutating virus would seem to be the wise decision to make.

Vaccinating 80% of the UK population would leave 13,400,000 open to infection and prone to subsequent transmision of any COVID variant

Herd immunity doesn't work like that and as I've said a large proportion of people already have antibodies or immune systems that recognise the infection. We are not trying to eradicate covid (which is simply not possible), we are trying to eradicate severe illness as far as that is possible. The latter is very much within our reach and does not require 100% vaccination or even 80%.

Matt Hancock's press conference

Matt Hancock says the early evidence suggests that the Indian variant passes on more easily than the Kent variant. He repeats the figure he used earlier in the Commons, about 2,967 cases of the Indian variant being discovered.

He says the government is throwing everything at the new variant in Bolton. He says the weekly case rate in Bolton is now 283 per 100,000, and it’s doubled in the last week.

He says there are 25 people in hospital in Bolton with Covid

Urgent discussions were being held in Whitehall nearly two weeks ago over what to do about the Indian variant, with some advisors urging ministers not to proceed with this week's stage three lockdown lifting on Monday.

Some scientists believe that decision to unlock was a mistake, while a Tory source said some ministers were sympathetic to the idea the PM was pressing ahead too fast.

Discussions about the potential severity of its impact were held ahead of the decision on Friday 7 May to designate it a "variant of concern".

Nevertheless, four days later on Monday 10 May, Mr Johnson brushed off concerns, saying: "At the moment I'm feeling very positive about [the roadmap]."

The true depth of Whitehall's concern only became clear last Thursday, when Mr Johnson said he was now "anxious" about the variant.

On Friday, the prime minister finally admitted the final stage of the roadmap on 21 June could not be guaranteed.

However, he nevertheless went ahead with Monday's step three unlocking, which saw individuals allowed to meet one another socially indoors.

Mr Johnson and ministers have pushed vaccination "surges", combined with greater testing and encouraging people to isolate where necessary, to try and combat the Indian variant.

They also warn that if they pour additional vaccines into certain hotspots, this will mean shortages elsewhere - disrupting the rollout programme. This will put more lives at risk, they say.

There has been growing scrutiny of the government's decision to put India on the red list, weeks after neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

They were placed on the list on 9 April and India was added on the 23 April - days after Boris Johnson cancelled his trade visit to the country.

Asked in Parliament, on Monday, 17 May, why India had not been added earlier, Health Secretary Matt Hancock replied: "The truth is that when we put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, positivity among those arriving from those countries was three times higher than it was among those arriving from India."



They show that between 25 March and 7 April, the proportion of travellers testing positive for coronavirus on arrival in the UK were:

• from Bangladesh 3.7%
• from India 5.1%
• from Pakistan 6.2%

The government announced its decision to add Bangladesh and Pakistan to the red list, on 2 April

On 19 May, the health secretary was asked about his claim - and what the Test and Trace figures show - in Parliament.

Mr Hancock said: "The positivity rate in India, on which the decision to put Pakistan but not India on the red list was 1.6% in India and 4.6% in Pakistan, which is three times higher, as I said."

But those are not published figures. He did not give the date for them (so we cannot tell how rapidly India's rate climbed to the 5.1% recorded by 7 April) and he did not mention Bangladesh this time.

The statistical regulator has been clear that when unpublished information is "used publicly to inform Parliament, the media and the public, it should be published".

I mentioned on another thread that a trial of a third jag is being done in Autumn, to take into account the variants (India variant, in this case). So...are we all being jagged and poked to bits because the Govt cannot do their job?

The Cov-Boost study, which starts in June, will recruit 3,000 people of all ages who had their first dose in December or January, to test if this is worthwhile.

"It could be that some age groups may not need a booster and others do," said Prof Saul Faust, chief investigator for the trial, from the University of Southampton. "We are not trying to say one is better than the other. The aim is to find out whether there should be a booster campaign and which vaccine to use," he said.

Prof Faust said he was not expecting any vaccines to be "detrimental" but some could cause high fevers or very sore arms, for example, which would be useful to know.

The vaccines will be trialled at 18 sites across the UK, and half doses will also be tested.

The full list of sites is: Southampton, London (University College Hospital, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital and Northwick Park Harrow), Leicester, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Wrexham, Bradford, Oxford, Glasgow, Leeds, Cambridge, Birmingham, Brighton, Stockport, Liverpool and Exeter.

IMO, it's a good idea - the program will generate lots of useful data in a short time:

Third dose of Covid jab to be trialled in UK

[

THREE doses will be belt and braces, then ……

Cases of Indian variant increase by almost 30% since Monday

: