INDEX	Wednesday June 16, 2021
	Timeline of a virus
Day 1	On 31 Dec 2019 Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A new strain of coronavirus was subsequently identified.
Day 343	On 8 December 2020 it was reported that 90-year-old Maggie Keenan from Enniskellen, Northern Ireland, became the first person in the UK to be given a Covid 19 vaccination (the Pfizer jab).
Day 532	On 15 June 2021 (189 days later) the BBC reported that close to 42 million people in the UK had been given a first dose of the vaccine, that's about four out of five adults. Something approaching 30 million had received a second dose.
Using simple maths one can extrapolate from the above that were a new variant to emerge that the vaccines were not effective in preventing on (say) October 1, 2021, that it would probably take at least 190 days to modify the vaccines and then vaccinate the UK population again. This means we would probably get back to where we are now no earlier than April 9, 2022. However, it is worth saying that despite an extremely low current death rate from Covid 19 (16 tested positive at time of death and a further 6 had the virus mentioned on their death certificates in the 24 hours June 13/14 according to NHS Statistics), the UK Government is so concerned about the current position that it just put back relaxing its pandemic restrictions. The Government is worried about the Delta variant, and some studies have suggested existing vaccines may be less effective in preventing it. It therefore remains possible that even if the UK did have a lockdown between November 2021 and April 2022 that when the country emerged from controls yet another new variant might emerge, in much the same way that the Delta one has.
Posted by Jonathan Brind.
INDEX
Wednesday June 16, 2021