Delta cases, blue tits and that one-in-two cancer claim
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Delta variant is behind the big increase in the number of new Covid 19 cases in the UK since April. We take a look at what impact vaccines have had on infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
Chris Packham told viewers on the BBC’s Springwatch that blue tits eat 35 billion caterpillars a year. We get him onto the programme to explain.
How much does Type 2 diabetes cost the NHS a year? While exploring a dubious claim we find out why its hard to work that out.
Is it true that on in two people will get cancer? We’ve looked at this statistic before but listeners keep spotting it on TV.
We also ask: if the SarsCov2 RNA is 96% similar to the RNA of a virus found in bats - is that similar, or not?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.9 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, the programme which makes all the numbers add up, whether |
| 0:10.6 | we're counting caterpillars, cancer or cases of Covid. |
| 0:15.5 | This week some huge numbers. We've been told that blue tits eat 35 billion caterpillars |
| 0:22.6 | in a matter of days and that diabetes costs the NHS £1.5 million a second. These figures |
| 0:32.0 | are hard to believe and indeed one of them is completely false but we'll look at them |
| 0:36.8 | both later. We'll also ask if the SARS-CoV-2 RNA is 96% similar to the RNA of a virus found |
| 0:46.3 | in bats. Well, is that similar or not? But first, anyone following the news will have heard |
| 0:54.1 | about the rise of a new variant, the Delta variant. First detected in India, it made its way |
| 1:00.2 | to the UK in April and is already completely dominant, having shouldered all the other |
| 1:05.3 | variants aside. At the same time, the UK has enjoyed a loosening of lockdown restrictions. |
| 1:11.1 | We can finally eat inside a restaurant with friends or stay overnight with relatives. |
| 1:15.7 | Perhaps no surprise then that after months of falling case numbers, we're now seeing |
| 1:20.4 | rising Covid cases again. Recently, confirmed cases have been rising at over 30% per week, |
| 1:28.0 | doubling every 17 days. At the low point this year, there were under 2,000 new cases a day. |
| 1:35.3 | We're now seeing around 10,000 cases a day. So the question is, should we be worried? |
| 1:42.8 | Well, of course we should be worried because Kate lambs on the studio. Hello Kate. |
| 1:47.2 | Hello. Yeah, it seems that the cases are rising really fast at the moment and are all |
| 1:51.5 | these new cases Delta variant infections? Pretty much. Yeah, when the Delta variant arrived in |
| 1:57.2 | April, cases were relatively low and the dominant strain at the time was the alpha variant, which |
| 2:02.4 | was first identified in Kent. Case numbers began to rise in late May. And while testing labs |
| 2:08.5 | don't study the genetic material of every case, they do look at most of them. |
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