Oliver Eales

#PLOSBiology study reveals how the severity of effects of #SARS-CoV-2 in England was affected by the mass #vaccination campaign and emergence of new variants between May 2020 and March 2022. @eales96 @SRileyIDD @ReactStudy plos.io/3OBH4Yo

📝 The use of representative community samples to assess SARS-CoV-2 lineage competition: Alpha outcompetes Beta and wild-type in England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿from January to March 2021 📅 @eales96 @andrewjpage @sonjantang @profhelenward @SRileyIDD @wendybarclay11 microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…

Our latest paper from the @ReactStudy is now available @PLOSCompBiol. We investigate how SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence changed during England’s ‘roadmap out of lockdown’ journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…

Great shout out for UK community infection surveys. One example of a how they are useful is tracking how severity per infection changes over time. New preprint out today with @eales96 from @ReactStudy. medrxiv.org/content/10.110… The @ons CIS continues to enable this assessment.

Further #SARSCoV2 variants, and intermittent epidemics may become the 'new normal' @eales96 @ReactStudy #COVID19 go.nature.com/3bzy0Ci

BA.2 had a multiplicative R advantage over BA.1/BA.1.1 of approximately 1.5 BA.2’s R was greater than 1 at the end of the study and can explain the increases in cases/hospitalizations in England seen during March 2022 6/6

On 30 December when Omicron prevalence peaked, the Omicron sub-lineage BA.2 represented only 0.2% of all Omicron lineages but by 1 March 2022 was at 68.7% Prevalence of BA.2 was rising over this period whereas prevalence of BA.1/BA.1.1 was falling 5/6

Our new REACT-1 pre-print (not peer-reviewed) titled “The new normal? Dynamics and scale of the SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron epidemic in England” is now available covering up to 1 March 2022 medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Main findings below 1/6

Researchers who tracked the replacement of #Delta by #Omicron in the UK in December 2021 report large falls in infection prevalence among adults who received a booster shot and vaccinated older children compared with unvaccinated younger children. fcld.ly/2fadygb

Sub-group analysis found greater median duration positive in those: -With initial low N-gene Ct value, -Exhibiting symptoms -Infected with the Alpha variant Sensitivity (P0) was greater for those: -With initial low N-gene Ct value -Who were pre-symptomatic 4/4

-Decay model used to infer incidence over 13 rounds of REACT-1 -Compared to swab positivity (black), infection incidence (red) includes sharper features with evident transient increases at the time of key changes in social distancing measures. 3/4

Our new pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) characterising the decay in RT-PCR positivity after an initial positive test in REACT-1, and trends in infection incidence is now live on Medrxiv: medrxiv.org/cgi/content/sh… 1/4

The latest results from the REACT-1 study (round 13: 24 June to 13 July 2021), a thread 👇(1/n) New pre-print: imperial.ac.uk/medicine/resea… @SRileyIDD @eales96 @HaoweiWang7 @DrDJHaw @DrCWalters @MRC_Outbreak

New interim round 13 (24 June-5 July) REACT-1 results indicate a 4-fold increase in weighted prevalence compared to round 12 (20 May-7 June) with estimated doubling time = 6.1 (4.0, 12) days & R=1.87 (1.40, 2.45) imperial.ac.uk/medicine/resea… @SRileyIDD @DrDJHaw @eales96 @HaoweiWang7

-Multiple VOC and VUI detected in round 8 but not in later rounds -Single detection in round 8 implies large numbers in the community. -Decrease in proportion of B.1.351 relative to B.1.1.7 was found to be significant (P=0.02) 6/6

-Similar proportion of B.1.1.7 and wild type infections exhibiting a classic COVID-19 symptom or any symptom in the last week - Higher proportion of B.1.1.7 infections testing antibody positive 6 weeks later however 5/6

REACT-1 lineage dynamics from rounds 8 (January) 9 (February) and 10 (March) is now live on Medrxiv medrxiv.org/content/10.110… (note - this preprint is specifically about lineage dynamics, not round 11 which is a separate manuscript) 1/6