Approximately 26 million people are eligible to receive a Covid-19 booster over the next few months.
The solver is asked to think about how the new variant would spread. One of the UK's leading epidemiologists, Professor Adam Kucharski, set it.
The average number of infections caused by any person is known as the reproduction number.
The answer to the question of R.
If a new COVID variant emerged, everyone would be susceptible to infections but not severe disease.
Each person with the variant is exposed to two other people. If a person has already had the virus, they are immune from it.
immunity builds until the epidemic peaks and begins to decline 75% of the population have been affected by this variant.
How many people in the population were exposed to infections during this wave? This result is surprising.
It's a good idea to take a guess before trying to work it out. Even though it seems like a fast-spreading virus, a quarter of the population dodges it. England's reproduction number never reached 2 in the next two decades.
Here is a handy equation that can be used to calculate.
R equals R 0 and S equals R.
The reproduction number when everyone is susceptible is R 0. The percentage of susceptible is represented by the number S.
I will return to the UK at 5pm with the answer and a discussion.
Please don't give away any information.
A big thank you to Adam Kucharski. He is the author of Rules of Contagion.
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