Waning immunity likely to blame for rising COVID cases in elderly

Experts have warned waning immunity in the elderly is likely one of the three main factors driving an apparent increase in COVID cases in the over 55s.

COVID has been on the rise in England in recent weeks, and this has been matched by a rise in daily hospital admissions to back over 1,000 a day.

London, the East of England, the Midlands, North West, South East and South East have all seen their hospitalisations rise in recent weeks.

The only place without a noticeable rise is the North East and Yorkshire.

In the South West, they are higher than they were at the peak of the Omicron wave.

Although experts tend to agree that immunity drop off is less of a problem than it was with the second dose of the vaccine when compared to the third, there are fears that it is still happening.

Read more: COVID: Government reduces number of free lateral flow tests Brits can order online

Experts have also warned the spread of the Omicron sublineage BA.2, which the World Health Organization has said appears to be more transmissible than the standard variant, is rising sharply.

All of this combined with the fact life in England has more or else returned back to normal with minimal mask-wearing has worried some experts.

In England, 98.4% of the adult population are estimated to have antibodies against COVID, but you can still catch it even if they're present in your body.

Infections in England have also been rising fastest among people aged 55 and older.

Watch: Living with long Covid: The UK's next health crisis

Professor Paul Elliott, director of Imperial College London’s React programme, said it is possible that the figures indicate infections are beginning to rise in England but it is unclear where they will go.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said: “These data confirm that cases have declined substantially following the peak of the Omicron wave.

“However, the increasing presence of the BA.2 sub-lineage of Omicron and the recent slight increase in infections in those over 55 show that the pandemic is not over and that we can expect to see COVID circulating at high levels.

The latest findings from the React-1 study, covering 8 February to 1 March – round 18 of the study, show that prevalence in England during this period was 2.88%.

This was down on the 4.41% reported in round 17 covering January 5 to January 20 2022.

However, it was also the second highest recorded rate of cases since the study began in 2020.

The findings means that over the period the data was collected, around one in 35 people in England was infected with the virus.

Asked whether the increasing numbers of BA.2 could lead to a surge in new cases, Prof Elliott said the data needs to be tracked carefully.

He added: “It is more transmissible.

“We are seeing an uptick in infections, particularly in the older group, and we are seeing an uptick in hospitalisations.

“So I think what we say in our paper is that we really need to be monitoring closely the infection data through surveys, such as React, and we need to monitor the hospitalisations.

“At the moment, we’re possibly seeing the beginning of an uptick, but we don’t know where it’s going to go.”