Graph shows how much risk the Queen is at from COVID-19 given widespread reports she had 3 doses of vaccine
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Marianne Guenot
Feb 21, 2022, 20:28 IST
Queen Elizabeth II during the Qipco British Champions Day at Ascot Racecourse on October 16, 2021 in Ascot, England.Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
The Queen tested positive for COVID-19 at the age of 95, Buckingham Palace said Sunday.
Over-90s are at most risk, but that declines sharply with each dose of vaccine, per UK data.
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Queen Elizabeth II, who tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, is at greatly reduced risk from COVID-19 if she has received three doses of vaccine, per UK data.
Buckingham Palace confirmed on Sunday that the 95-year-old monarch had tested positive for COVID-19. It said she had only mild symptoms and remained able to do light work.
Officials have only formally confirmed the Queen's first dose of vaccine, in January 2021.
But a palace spokesperson on Monday pointed Insider to reports (such as those from the BBC and ITV) that she had since had a full course of three doses, with the implication that they are accurate.
"The Queen is entitled to medical privacy," the spokesperson said. "However, it has been widely reported that The Queen has had them all and, in a videocall The Queen called on people to accept the offer of a vaccination."
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The graph above, from the UK Office for National Statistics, illustrates the risk of death involving COVID-19 for those aged 90+ in England in the second half of 2021.
The measure used here is called "person-years," a metric used by statisticians to assess overall death rates over a certain period of time.
It isn't possible to ascribe an exact risk to an individual from statistics like these given the number of variables at play. But they can give a broad sense of how older people respond to the disease compared to other age groups.
The graph shows that over-90s are most likely to die after getting sick, but vaccines make a huge difference.
Three doses reduced the risk for over-90s by about 93%, making the risk lower than for an unvaccinated person in their 60s. With two doses, the risk was around the same level as an unvaccinated person in their 70s.
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The data was collected when the Delta variant was dominant in England.
Omicron became the dominant UK variant in December 2021 and is likely the strain to have infected the Queen. It is in general considered milder than Delta, but its specific effect on 90+ age groups is not totally clear.
Charles had met with the Queen at Windsor Palace on February 8 and tested positive on February 10, Insider previously reported.
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