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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

editor said:
And up she rises
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By test specimen date, the current temptation when looking at the latest graphs of positive cases is to see a picture of case numbers either stagnating or only falling at much slower rates recently.

Since this is by specimen data some figures are incomplete and will be added to in future. That sort of period is shown here in grey but some of those grey bars apart from the most recent one might not actually grow much more in the coming days, impossible to say.

Screenshot 2021-08-05 at 16.08.15.png
 
Relating to the previous point, it reminds me of the Economist's criticism of Richard Temple importing rice during the Orissa famine, i.e. that it would lead people to erroneously believe that it was the government's job to keep them alive. The great unwashed exist for the purpose of value extraction, not as a value sink, an attitude that hasn't changed a lot in the minds of British elites since 1866.
 
I've complained in the past that when I try to look at hospital admissions by age, there is an absurdly broad 18-64 group in the data.

Now that authorities have reasons to try to improve vaccine uptake in younger age groups, we've been treated to a one off revelation that a fifth of admissions are aged 18-34.

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid: Fifth of England hospital admissions aged 18-34

The new NHS chief executive urges unvaccinated young adults to get jabbed, saying it is "so important".
www.bbc.co.uk

Well what I really mean is that when I read that story I initially feared it was just a one-off revelation in an interview, but actually it looks like they've put these details in the proper data now too. The spreadsheet that comes out once a month with some age details has been updated to include a much larger number of separate age bands. I shall dig into this data later, I think its the last file on this page: Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity
 
Apologies for the colours used in this graph.

What we have here is the hospital admissions/diagnoses per day by age group for England, as mentioned in previous post.

We can see that in the youngest age groups, peak hospitalisation numbers are quite similar to those seen in the terrible winter wave. But we dont have to travel that far up the age groups to see the massive impact of vaccines this time, with admissions a fraction of those seen in the winter wave.

If we look at the autumn wave (pre-Alpha) instead, we can see that this time around the combination of admissions in age groups all the way up to 64 this time around is not dissimilar to the autumn peak admission levels in people up to that age, and that its those who were in the age groups above that which made the autumn peak higher than the one seen recently.

I suppose I will do a follow up post to this at some point where I look at the peak number of admissions in each age group and describe them in terms of what percentage of the autumn and winter peaks they reached.

Screenshot 2021-08-05 at 17.20.jpg
 
elbows said:
Apologies for the colours used in this graph.

What we have here is the hospital admissions/diagnoses per day by age group for England, as mentioned in previous post.

We can see that in the youngest age groups, peak hospitalisation numbers are quite similar to those seen in the terrible winter wave. But we dont have to travel that far up the age groups to see the massive impact of vaccines this time, with admissions a fraction of those seen in the winter wave.

If we look at the autumn wave (pre-Alpha) instead, we can see that this time around the combination of admissions in age groups all the way up to 64 this time around is not dissimilar to the autumn peak admission levels in people up to that age, and that its those who were in the age groups above that which made the autumn peak higher than the one seen recently.

I suppose I will do a follow up post to this at some point where I look at the peak number of admissions in each age group and describe them in terms of what percentage of the autumn and winter peaks they reached.

View attachment 282247
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Very interesting, thanks.

Too bad for the poor 25-34s who weren't fully vaccinated and have been hit just as hard in this wave as the last one.

Most 25-34s I know have only just got their 2nd jab or will be getting it v. soon. So we should see admissions go down in that age group 2-3 weeks from now if we're lucky.
 
Cat Fan said:
Very interesting, thanks.

Too bad for the poor 25-34s who weren't fully vaccinated and have been hit just as hard in this wave as the last one.

Most 25-34s I know have only just got their 2nd jab or will be getting it v. soon. So we should see admissions go down in that age group 2-3 weeks from now if we're lucky.
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I've done some percentage comparisons now of the latest peak compared to the autumn and winter ones.

But note that for this exercise I have only used absolute worst day peak numbers for whichever days in these waves each age group experienced their very highest numbers. A better way of judging the overall burden on each age group would be to count the total admissions, but I cant do that for this wave yet, and there are terrible complications trying to do it for the autumn and winter waves as they hugely overlap.

Compared to the January peak admission figures, I get things like this for the recent July peak:

0-5: 100% (peak of 33 admissions/diagnoses in one day on both occasions)
6-17: 100% (31 on both occasions)
18-24: 100% (64 on both occasions)
25-34: 84.2% (144 this time, 171 last time)
35-44: 52% (119 this time, 229 last time)
45-54: 28.5% (119 this time, 417 last time)
55-64: 18.4% (115 this time, 625 last time)
65-74: 14.2% (102 this time, 718 last time)
75-84: 11.8% (106 this time, 899 last time)
85+: 10% (80 this time, 800 last time)

Like I said, I would prefer to do this with total admissions over the length of each wave, but cannot. It still gives some useful indication I suppose. I've also done plenty of manual work to come up with those figures and there is nobody to check my workings out so who knows if I've made any mistakes.

I guess I'll post the same figures but compared to the autumn peak shortly.

There are a number of things we can draw from this sort of data. We can for example notice how much of the burden has been reduced in older ages, but also how that now means that pretty much every age group above 24 has placed a somewhat similar strain on hospitals this time.
 
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It looks like 35-45s age group also hasn't changed hugely.

Should probably be seen in the context of quite different behaviour during each wave though. In other words people in these age groups have possibly been out and about a lot more during this wave but not suffered increased hospitalisations as a result.
 
Same comparison but with the July peak compared to the November 2020 autumn peak:

0-5: 253.8% (33 this time, 13 last November)
6-17: 206.7% (31 this time, 15 last November)
18-24: 213.3% (64 this time, 30 last November)
25-34: 205.7% (144 this time, 70 last November)
35-44: 132.2% (119 this time, 90 last November)
45-54: 85.6% (119 this time, 139 last November)
55-64: 53.5% (115 this time, 215 last November)
65-74: 32.5% (102 this time, 314 last November)
75-84: 26.3% (106 this time, 403 last November)
85+: 22% (80 this time, 363 last November)

Also note that even where there are similarities in totals between waves, the way they have been spread across each region has varied a fair bit for each wave, and I wont be repeating any of these tedious exercises on a per region basis! I have done something vaguely similar for a few regions in terms of peak number of people in hospital beds and in mechanical ventilator beds, but I'm not ready to describe those properly at the moment and may as well wait to see what happens next in this wave before I do more of this sort of thing.
 
One further way of looking at the same data is to look at what percentage of admissions per day each age group is responsible for.

A quick eyeballing of charts like this one suggest that the age groups under 55, who accounted for about a quarter of hospital admissions at one stage of the winter wave, were involved in over half the admissions per day in the current wave. Although when I say that I have to point out that its been gradually sliding slightly back in the other direction, but not to the extent that we would quickly end up back with the old proportions.

Thats represented in the following chart by the area from the bottom up to, and including, the purple area.

Screenshot 2021-08-05 at 18.19.jpg
 
Badgers said:
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Yes, and even the red list itself is 90% about politics, 10% about science.

For example India is being moved onto the amber list ahead of many other red list countries in similar situations.

USA is on the amber list despite being in the midst of a big resurgence in cases. Mexico is being moved onto the red list but not USA.

Meanwhile the USA has a travel ban on people coming in from the UK anyway! Some special relationship there...
 
WG has issued a deliciously ranty statement re quarantining and international travel: Written Statement: International travel changes from 8 August 2021 (5 August 2021) | GOV.WALES

The UK Government has announced changes to the red, amber and green country lists for international travel in England. Despite our continued efforts to press for UK-wide decision-making in this area, decisions for England have once again been made without engagement with the Welsh Government or the other Devolved Governments.

This is unacceptable – international travel policy affects all parts of the UK and Welsh interests need to be part of the decision-making process.

We are extremely disappointed with the unilateral approach taken and believe there remain clear public health risks posed by re-opening international travel while the virus is circulating globally. For these reasons, we continue to caution against international travel for non-essential reasons this summer.

However, as we share an open border with England, it would not be practical or viable to introduce a separate border health policy.
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tldr: they're aligning their policy with that of England.
 
Cat Fan said:
No offence to the Welsh government, but they only represent 3m people out of a country of 70m and they don't have any major airports. All the impotent rants in the world won't change that!
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It remains the case that they ARE part of the UK, and it would have made a lot more sense throughout this pandemic if the English government had at least attempted to co-ordinate their actions with their devolved counterparts.

It's not just about international travel - there is considerable traffic, including holiday traffic, between England and Wales, and the abrupt and seemingly random changes in English policy have made it extremely difficult for the Welsh government to continue to implement its own policies - as it is perfectly legally entitled to do. With the result that, for example, we have recently had a lot of English people coming to Wales and then refusing to comply with Welsh regulations and wear masks because "I'm English". FTR, I am also English - this isn't a Welsh nationalist thing. It's a consideration and courtesy thing, and I think that the Welsh Government is perfectly entitled to call out the shabby way in which Johnson has conducted himself in regard to his relationships with the devolved nations.
 
existentialist said:
It remains the case that they ARE part of the UK, and it would have made a lot more sense throughout this pandemic if the English government had at least attempted to co-ordinate their actions with their devolved counterparts.

It's not just about international travel - there is considerable traffic, including holiday traffic, between England and Wales, and the abrupt and seemingly random changes in English policy have made it extremely difficult for the Welsh government to continue to implement its own policies - as it is perfectly legally entitled to do. With the result that, for example, we have recently had a lot of English people coming to Wales and then refusing to comply with Welsh regulations and wear masks because "I'm English". FTR, I am also English - this isn't a Welsh nationalist thing. It's a consideration and courtesy thing, and I think that the Welsh Government is perfectly entitled to call out the shabby way in which Johnson has conducted himself in regard to his relationships with the devolved nations.
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Not impressed with that, if the WAG think its really a bad policy they shouldn't mirror it and having an open border between us an England wouldnt completely negate the positive effect of us not allowing high infection countries open travel to Cardiff, it is of course about the Economy but Drakeford wants its to look like it's Boris's fault when things take off again here in Wales
 
Cat Fan said:
Yes, and even the red list itself is 90% about politics, 10% about science.

For example India is being moved onto the amber list ahead of many other red list countries in similar situations.

USA is on the amber list despite being in the midst of a big resurgence in cases. Mexico is being moved onto the red list but not USA.

Meanwhile the USA has a travel ban on people coming in from the UK anyway! Some special relationship there...
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Not disputing that politics doesn't play a part, but it's not as simple as numbers of cases, there's other factors at play; variants and vaccination levels for example. Just going on about how it doesn't make sense when you look at the case numbers is that trick the travel industry uses to try and put pressure on the government to open up more.

Look at the testing and vaccination % level difference between Mexico and the USA for example, that's the difference.
 
_Russ_ said:
Not impressed with that, if the WAG think its really a bad policy they shouldn't mirror it and having an open border between us an England wouldnt completely negate the positive effect of us not allowing high infection countries open travel to Cardiff, it is of course about the Economy but Drakeford wants its to look like it's Boris's fault when things take off again here in Wales
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Well, yes - I would prefer that WG had continued to plough its own furrow, and not capitulate to the Haystack Buffoon. But I imagine that the situation is probably pretty untenable as it stands - the disparities were hard enough to police earlier on in lockdown, and it's probably even worse now.

And, if it does all go pear shaped in Wales, why shouldn't we point the finger at England's shitty and useless approach? It's hardly as if we'd be on our own, given the fairly extensive international criticism of UK policy throughout.

One thing's for sure - it's playing very nicely into the hands of the Welsh nationalist movement, and good luck to them.
 
Hopefully the hospitalisations by age stuff I posted the other day gives people the right sense of what was actually said and meant by Amanda Pritchard.

Because its not unusual for recent reporting to describe what was said as "She added the level of young adults being admitted to hospital was four times higher than the peak last winter."

People might think that 'level' implies the raw number of cases, but this isnt what the data shows. Its the proportion of younger adults that is much higher, not the actual numbers of younger people being 4 times higher.

Hugh Pym of the BBC seems to understand this, and so uses the right language, eg:

In one sense the latest figures showing a sharply higher proportion of under 35s among Covid hospital patients illustrates the success of the vaccination programme.
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Quotes are from Covid: Fifth of England hospital admissions aged 18-34 but I've seen similar vague use of the word level more recently so felt the need to make this post.
 
Has it been established that we measure hospital admissions citing covid as the the cause rather than detected?
 
IC3D said:
Has it been established that we measure hospital admissions citing covid as the the cause rather than detected?
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No the definition used for the standard daily data has not changed.

What happened is that "for" and "with" info is being collected, and a version of this data was made public on July 29th, leading to shit articles by the Telegraph. I don think that form of data has been released again since.

So when I post daily hosiptal admissions/diagnoses graphs for England like the one below, it still includes every patient for whom Covid was detected in the hospital setting (or prior to admission).

This graph is one of a number of data sources which demonstrate why my current levels of optimism are rather limited in regards about whats happened recently and what is to come. But the picture might look different again to me by the next time this data comes out (it isnt reported at weekends). In much the same way that this graph would have created a somewhat more pleasing impression last time I posted it, because it didnt have those last 3 days of entries in it back then.

Screenshot 2021-08-06 at 18.13.jpg

Data used to make that graph is from the following page, which also has the July 29th data I mentioned and some blurb explaining it and some caveats. Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity
 
In terms of cases by specimen date, when zooming into individual towns, cities etc it seems to be much easier for me to find places where number of cases is getting stuck at high levels recently, than places showing other patterns. Dont get me wrong, there are still quite a lot of places we can find with other trends, but the levelling off of numbers seems the rather dominant trend right now.

With football season upon us and a mixed picture on the weather front, and the hospital numbers I just posted, my sense of optimism remains diminished but I still dont rule anything out, I still dont know what will happen next.
 
Thx elbows
We have green Amber and red pathways which is fairly self explanatory. However there is a lot of pressure to take red patients, those with confirmed +ve or confirmed contact into siderooms on green and Amber wards because pressures. Sometimes comes very close to a slip up esp with junior staff leading to patients that self isolate losing that green status.
 
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