Summer Covid wave ‘building’ after rise in hospital admissions

A summer Covid wave is “building”, scientists have said following a rise in hospital admissions amid the rise of the new “Flirt” variants.

The prevalence of illness caused by Covid is harder to quantify since widespread testing was axed, but hospital admissions indicated that a summer wave was under way by the middle of this month after the number of cases rose by a quarter in a week.

The number of people hospitalised with Covid was 3.31 per 100,000 in the week ending June 16 – up from 2.67 the week before – and was higher among the elderly, peaking at 34.70 in the over-85s.

There was also a 29 per cent surge in positive cases in the week to June 22, although the majority of testing is now done in hospital and healthcare settings.

Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, a consultant epidemiologist for immunisation at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said it was “seeing an increase in Covid-19 across all indicators, including hospitalisations”.

Experts fear the existing vaccines may not provide the same level of protection against new variants, which are several mutations away from those that initially spread.

‘This is a wake-up call’

The main “Flirt” variants, known as KP.2 and KP.3, accounted for a combined 40 per cent of Covid in April – the last time UKHSA published a breakdown of the variants.

While the KP.2 was the more prevalent of the two then, it is believed that KP.3 is the driving force behind a summer wave. Both are mutations from the previously dominant JN.1 variant, and scientists believe they allow the virus to spread more easily.

Prof Steve Griffin of Leeds University said: “This is clearly early days, but it certainly looks as though yet another Covid wave is building. If the rise in hospitalisations continues, this is obviously worrying. 

“Although we’ve just had a spring booster campaign for vulnerable populations, the uptake was lower than in 2023. There is a considerable difference between the current vaccines and circulating viruses.”

Around 4.1 million of the seven million eligible for a spring Covid booster took up the offer, which ends on Sunday, meaning 40 per cent will not get the extra protection despite being deemed most vulnerable. More than a third of care home residents have not had a booster either.

Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, told the i: “This is a wake-up call. The virus hasn’t gone away, and is certainly not a seasonal infection.”

‘We are all going to get repeated Covid infections’

UKHSA said it still needed “more data” on the new variants to understand how severe and transmissible they might be, and that it was “impossible” to tell at this stage whether these variants were behind the rise in hospital admissions and cases.

However, Prof Paul Hunter, an epidemiology expert from the University of East Anglia, said the increases should not be a cause for alarm because Covid was now part of everyday life.

“I think we’re probably seeing about as much infection this year as we were seeing last year – a little bit less, but not hugely less,” he told the BBC. “We are all of us going to get repeated Covid infections from birth through to death. 

“Generally, what we’ve seen is that over the last three years, four years, the severity of illness associated with Covid has gone down a lot. Ultimately, it’s going to become another cause of the common cold and, for many people, that’s what it is now. To be honest, you can’t really avoid it because it’s so common.”