Dynamics of a national Omicron SARS-CoV-2 epidemic during January 2022 in England
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Rapid transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has led to record-breaking case incidence rates around the world. Since May 2020, the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study tracked the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England through RT-PCR of self-administered throat and nose swabs from randomly-selected participants aged 5 years and over. In January 2022, we found an overall weighted prevalence of 4.41% (n=102,174), three-fold higher than in November to December 2021; we sequenced 2,374 (99.2%) Omicron infections (19 BA.2), and only 19 (0.79%) Delta, with a growth rate advantage for BA.2 compared to BA.1 or BA.1.1. Prevalence was decreasing overall (reproduction number R=0.95, 95% credible interval [CrI], 0.93, 0.97), but increasing in children aged 5 to 17 years (R=1.13, 95% CrI, 1.09, 1.18). In England during January 2022, we observed unprecedented levels of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially among children, driven by almost complete replacement of Delta by Omicron.
Date Issued
2022-08-03
Date Acceptance
2022-07-14
Citation
Nature Communications, 2022, 13
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
13
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Cancer Research UK
Commission of the European Communities
Commission of the European Communities
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust- BRC Funding
Wellcome Trust
National Institute for Health Research
Department of Health
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust: Research Capability Funding (RCF)
Department of Health
National Institute for Health Research
UK Research and Innovation
Grant Number
‘Mechanomics’ PRC project grant 22184
874627
874739
MR/R015600/1
RDF01
205456/A/16/Z
NF-SI-0617-10116
n/a
RDF04
n/a
RP-2016-07-012
9815274 MC_PC_19025
Subjects
Base Sequence
COVID-19
Child
Humans
SARS-CoV-2
Specimen Handling
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 4500