Breaking—Fears growing that a new #DeltaVariant subvariant has emerged after 5000 young people infected from attending a 53,000 music festival in Cornwall—linked genetically to a Delta subtype. The region now has the highest #COVID19 rate in England. https://inews.co.uk/news/health/boardmasters-festival-new-delta-strain-cornwall-event-1172393…
2) “It was traced because they can identify where it came from by genetic changes in the code.” While it is being referred to among hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall as the “festival variant”, it is believed to be a new strain of Delta rather than an entirely new variant.”
4) “The figures also show that around half of all infections in England are among those under 30, with the highest rate of infection now in the 10 to 19-year-old age bracket.”
6) a senior scientific advisor has warned that such mass gatherings offer the virus a far greater opportunity to spread than any other outdoor event type. Professor John Drury called on the Government to mandate festival organisers to implement stronger measures to mitigate.
8) And we can expect greater physical intimacy– touching, close interaction, hugging, sharing drinks etc – at a music festival than at other large events.
11) If that mass gathering is for several days, like a music festival, then there’s also going to be a lot more contact between people, which give the virus more opportunity to spread.”
~1000 infected out of 20,000-person music festival in the Netherlands. Maybe this type of thing is bad idea during a pandemic while #DeltaVariant? NL also had the sharpest #COVID19 spike in the world last week. Now I worry for soccer even more. https://ad.nl/utrecht/bijna-1000-bezoekers-festival-verknipt-besmet-teller-loopt-op-meer-besmettingen-niet-uit-te-sluiten~a67ae08f/…
16) I know it’s a busy day with two new troubling variants, but in addition to the UK Cornwall music #festivalvariant subtype of Delta, I think the new #C12 variant is worse. It is the MOST MUTATED variant found to date—see below thread twitter.com/drericding/sta…
17) Even the #DeltaVariant appears to continually acquire new mutations. There are now a dozen or more Delta subtypes. But the newest one from Cornwall’s music festival appears to be one of the largest new subtype pockets.