Do you have a source for B.1.1.7 being dominant in Italy/Israel?
Assuming it’s already dominant there, that strongly suggests that it’s infectious enough to have rapidly outcompeted other strains, but that Italy/Israel were able to push down the higher R through some combination of behavioral change and vaccination.
(Note: I can’t find any sources saying B.1.1.7 is dominant in Italy or Israel, and I’d be surprised if that were already the case.)
I might be missing something, but where in this link do you see the dominance?
If it is the large proportion of sequencing showing B.1.1.7 (18/33 for Italy and 4⁄13 for Israel), isn’t that due to increased surveillance, like testing positive people coming from the UK?
Caveat: Most locations outside the original focus have not reported sustained transmission and many cases have known travel links to the focal location. Increasing numbers of international cases is currently likely due to increased surveillance and vigilance.
You may well be right. I guess we don’t really know what the sampling bias is (it would have to be pretty strongly skewed towards incoming UK cases though to get to a majority, since the UK itself was near 50%).
Do you have a source for B.1.1.7 being dominant in Italy/Israel?
Assuming it’s already dominant there, that strongly suggests that it’s infectious enough to have rapidly outcompeted other strains, but that Italy/Israel were able to push down the higher R through some combination of behavioral change and vaccination.
(Note: I can’t find any sources saying B.1.1.7 is dominant in Italy or Israel, and I’d be surprised if that were already the case.)
See here: https://cov-lineages.org/global_report.html
I might be missing something, but where in this link do you see the dominance? If it is the large proportion of sequencing showing B.1.1.7 (18/33 for Italy and 4⁄13 for Israel), isn’t that due to increased surveillance, like testing positive people coming from the UK?
You may well be right. I guess we don’t really know what the sampling bias is (it would have to be pretty strongly skewed towards incoming UK cases though to get to a majority, since the UK itself was near 50%).