'Pretty massive screw-up': UK science chief corrects delta variant hospitalization stat that's been widely cited

There’s a good chance that today you’ve seen news stories citing a British science official’s statistic that 60 percent of people in the UK who are hospitalized with the delta variant are fully vaccinated.

Now the official in question has corrected himself:

Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July. About 60% of hospitalisations from covid are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people.

— Sir Patrick Vallance (@uksciencechief) July 19, 2021

Er, yeah, that’s quite a swing.

Pretty massive screw up https://t.co/EwliOGcnNA

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 19, 2021

This is QUITE a correction from the UK's science chief: https://t.co/yKsDtTfSOT

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) July 19, 2021

And as usual, the corrected version won’t be as widely spread as the original claim.

Rather significant difference. https://t.co/MxuodrP07j

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) July 19, 2021

This was a market moving error. https://t.co/UDEAFASWRV

— Ethan Kaplan (@ethank) July 19, 2021

Would that be misinformation?

— Don Carter (@d1carter) July 19, 2021