How bad will the third wave be?

‘We see no reason to go beyond 19 July,’ the newly appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid confidently declared on Monday. His comments follow those of the Prime Minister who has described 19 July as the ‘terminus date’ for lockdown restrictions. But has Javid grasped the realities of the situation? The Indian (Delta) variant rise poses a whole new set of questions. Will it be blocked by the ‘wall of vaccinated people’ that Chris Whitty described as our shield? Has enough been done to keep hospitalisations under control? And will we see a rise in the UK’s death toll, which stands at 128,000?

Important new data has arrived since I last wrote for The Spectator on 12 June outlining the predictions of my model, the Predictor Corrector Coronavirus Filter (PCCF). We now know that two vaccine doses enormously decrease the risk of serious disease and hospitalisation: Pfizer by 96 per cent, AstraZeneca by 92.