Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[quimcunx]

Anecdotally there seem to have been a lot more negative PCR tests after a positive or multiple positive LFTs, so if someone has any kind of positive test I would be inclined to assume that they're positive

Anecdotally I've only heard of it the other way round. positive PCR after several negative LFTs. My understanding is false negatives are an issue with LFTs, not false positives. Of course someone could think a line beside the C means Covid.

 

[teuchter]

Anecdotally I've only heard of it the other way round. positive PCR after several negative LFTs. My understanding is false negatives are an issue with LFTs, not false positives.

yes, same here.
If you get a positive LFT, you've very likely got covid.
Negative LFT, you probably don't have covid but you might.

 

[wtfftw]

yes, same here.
If you get a positive LFT, you've very likely got covid.
Negative LFT, you probably don't have covid but you might.

That was my understanding but I know a few people who have had it the other way round recently.

 

[quimcunx]

I had a PCR test in the post the other day and did notice some (cost cutting) changes. Maybe there is a new supplier and a dodgy batch.

 

[l'Otters]

Thinking back to a breakdown of the false positive / negative rates of ltf’s by Christina Pagel, iirc, it’s about 50% false negative and something around 5-10% false positive. But would have to dig out that info again to be sure as it was months ago now.

 

[elbows]

elbows is that the reporting that got a bit of a bad rap, because it divided the number of deaths by the total number of children in the UK, rather than the number that had actually had Covid? So in effect in somewhere like NZ where your chances of catching covid are much lower then the chances of dying from it are infintesimal, and at the moment as Covid-19 rips through the younger age-groups in the UK that number will have gone up significantly.

I dont know because I just ignore those aspects anyway, like the comforting headlines they are a distraction I seek to bypass. I posted it so you can have a look at the detail of what sort of health conditions they are seeing increasing the risk, and also because it demonstrates that a fair number of the children did not have known underlying conditions that are considered to be risk factors. Not because I think the actual risk numbers they've come up with are perfect. Take them with a pinch of salt and they still offer useful clues. I have a vague memory that the most recent complaint along the lines of what you describe was actually in regards a different report to do with long covid in children, but the same sort of logic will apply.

In other words I am less interested in any attempts such reports make to quantify individual risk on a whole population basis, and more interested in what percentage of the children that their studies actually saw admitted to hospital, intensive care, or who died had what conditions.

 

[Fruitloop]

Sure, understood. I'll have a dig into the important details and ignore the surface trivia

 

[elbows]

Sure, understood. I'll have a dig into the important details and ignore the surface trivia

Just to clarify my feelings on that - those things arent trivia really, but they are an area of contention and thats why I tend to bypass them so that sight is not lost of other important detail.

 

[elbows]

Here is a bit from one of those reports that I would certainly highlight. This is a study which looked at the results of many other studies.

Which children and young people are at higher risk of severe disease and death after SARS-CoV-2 infection: a systematic review and individual patient meta-analysis

medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences

www.medrxiv.org

Number of comorbid conditions was associated with increased odds of admission to critical care and death for COVID-19 in a dose-related fashion. For critical care admission odds ratios were: 1 comorbidity 1.49 (1.45-1.53); 2 comorbidities 2.58 (2.41-2.75); ≥3 comorbidities 2.97 (2.04-4.32), and for death: 1 comorbidity 2.15 (1.98-2.34); 2 comorbidities 4.63 (4.54-4.74); ≥3 co-morbidities 4.98 (3.78-6.65). Odds of admission to critical care were increased for all co-morbidities apart from asthma (0.92 (0.91-0.94)) and malignancy (0.85 (0.17-4.21)) with an increased odds of death in all co-morbidities considered apart from asthma. Neurological and cardiac comorbidities were associated with the greatest increase in odds of severe disease or death. Obesity increased the odds of severe disease and death independently of other comorbidities.

Interpretation Hospitalised CYP at greatest vulnerability of severe disease or death from SARS-CoV-2 infection are infants, teenagers, those with cardiac or neurological conditions, or 2 or more comorbid conditions, and those who are obese. These groups should be considered higher priority for vaccination and for protective shielding when appropriate. Whilst odds ratios were high, the absolute increase in risk for most comorbidities was small compared to children without underlying conditions.

 

[Dogsauce]

That was my understanding but I know a few people who have had it the other way round recently.

My boss has had exactly this, and has had some symptoms. Several positive lateral flow, PCR negative. Her interpretation is that the lateral flow was picking up ‘some other flu type thing’ which I‘m pretty sure isn’t how they would work.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

A polite request:
For various reasons I haven't been keeping up to date with the UK/England/London covid picture over the last several weeks

I;,m now back face to face teaching at university
very few students wearing masks
colleagues unsure when to wear a mask or not
I'm after an overview of where we are with covid infections, hospitalisation and death this week because I'm taking a meeting on Friday with immediate colleagues to pass on the union line on personal risk assessment and how we can get more students to wear masks

Does anyone have the energy to give me some headlines to share with colleagues ?

We have plenty of anecdata from colleagues with school age children who have covid and a few colleagues are off with covid caught from their children
Plenty of my students have school age children and/or work in nursery and school settings when not at uni

 

[elbows]

Well mask wearing has collapsed, its been denormalised and I'd only expect it to start increasing again if we have a sustained period of scary mood music, data and headlines. And those headlines are unlikely to be forthcoming at this present moment now since hospital admissions in England fell a fair bit in recent weeks.

Rates of infection are still really high but thats been normalised too.

So its not the best moment for headlines on the situation because a lot of the trends have been downwards and there are probably a lot of stories and headlines that arent going to happen unless it spikes back up again. In the meantime, obvious topics they could focus on more would be the rise in cases in school aged children which does show up in the data quite clearly. The press have tended to comment on it in terms of statistics about number of children off school, rather than the daily number of cases in those age groups going up.

I can give a slightly more detailed view using graphs rather than media headlines. I'll try to do some for the London region on Thursday. Including by age group. A lot of the falls have been in younger adults and one of the stories the press are likely to be waiting for is whether the return to universities leads to a new spike in certain age groups that them spreads across a broader range of age groups.

 

[elbows]

Although to be honest, London isnt the region I would focus on so far if I wanted to tell dramatic stories using data in this wave. Because unlike the North East for example, this wave so far has been more modest in London than the previous wave was in London. Thats also probably one of the big reasons why, since more people were infected in London in previous waves, leaving less susceptible people avaialble to catch it in this wave.

I dont know quite how many graphs I will get round to doing in time for your purpose, but there is really one headline story that really leaps out from the daily positive case numbers for England at the moment. And its a continuation of the story people have already been telling recently, but the data got substantially worse in recent days....

Positive cases in the 10-14 age group in England, by date of test specimen:



I havent checked every regions version of that data yet. But its likely to be a similar pattern in all regions, just more pronounced in some than others.

For example the leap in recent few days is dramatic in the East Midlands:



It is still present in the London region, but not to the same extent yet (eg note different scale on chart axis, and levels now compared to the July peak). Still not a million miles away from a very rapid doubling though:



Most of the other age groups have been going in quite the opposite direction, except 5-9 year olds where things are getting bad too, but not yet with such a dramatic additional spike/nearly doubling in the last few days. I dont have graphs ready to get into more detail in regards the other age groups yet.

 

[elbows]

Fuck the tories in this article.

Chris Whitty warns MPs it is ‘inevitable’ unvaccinated children will catch Covid

Chief medical officer says transmission in England highest among 12- to 15-year-olds

www.theguardian.com

Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, asked if the witnesses acknowledged there was “low transmission” of Covid among the 12-15 age group.

Whitty replied: “That is not true, there is definitely substantial transmission happening in this age group. In fact the age group we are talking about is the one in which the highest rate of transmission is currently occurring, as far as we can tell.”

He added that it was a “reasonable stab” to estimate that 50% of children in England had already had Covid, leaving many still at risk, and noted that children in deprived areas were at the greatest risk of seeing their education disrupted.

Caroline Johnson, the Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, asked: “Why not vaccinate just those children? We know that children from black and ethnic minoroity groups are more at risk from Covid.”

Whitty responded: “I’m not convinced that feels to me like an effective public health intervention,” adding that such discrimination would not be desirable.

But Johnson – a medical doctor – went on to ask Whitty if the risks to some “white boys” from vaccination made it justified.

“Just to be really clear on this, if you’re a parent in a rural area with relatively low levels of Covid disruption so far, who is white, male, and already certainly had Covid and tested positive for Covid before, is the vaccine still, for that child, in their benefit?” Johnson said.

 

[Fruitloop]

I like Deepti Gurdasani's phrase 'manufactured inevitability'. As in, it's not actually inevitable, but it will be because we're too busy lining our pockets and those of our mates to actually fucking do anything about it.

 

[Fruitloop]

Meanwhile, I think it's fair to say things are going very badly:

Covid cases among England’s schoolchildren hit record peak

Steep jump in infections raises spectre of further educational disruption

www.ft.com

 

[elbows]

That saves me thr trouble of having to do other graphs. I note that their story also includes hopes that the peak in that age group came quickly and then diminished in Leicester (where schools went back earlier).

 

[elbows]

In terms of longer term consequences, I suppose I am expecting that a range of stories are possible in regards to how our immune systems can be recalibrated by this virus. It might be a long time before all the implications of this emerge. But in the meantime we have stories like this:

Salons report new allergic reactions to hair dye

Scientists at Imperial College London are now researching a link between Covid-19 and new allergies.

www.bbc.co.uk

Hairdressers in parts of the UK are reporting clients having new allergic reactions, like rashes and burns, to hair dye after contracting coronavirus.

Scientists at Imperial College London are now researching how the disease could be reprogramming our immune system, in a similar way to other illnesses.

The trade body that represents hairdressers and beauticians is warning professionals to carry out additional patch tests to avoid facing legal action.

Gemma suffered a reaction to a patch test despite using the same hair dye for years. She had also recovered from a previous Covid infection. Her salon says it has seen four clients with the same issue since it began compulsory patch tests for all clients.

 

[elbows]

Shit all hospital data updates for England in the last few days due to 'a major incident with the data collection system used by NHS England'.

 

[cupid_stunt]

After around 10 days of the daily reported 7-average of new cases dropping, today it's gone up by 9.4%.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Shit all hospital data updates for England in the last few days due to 'a major incident with the data collection system used by NHS England'.

Ran out of rows on their Excel spreadsheet again.

 

[elbows]

After around 10 days of the daily reported 7-average of new cases dropping, today it's gone up by 9.4%.

For England this is driven largely by the age groups we've been talking about in the last day or two. But there were also quite a lot of cases in many other age groups with a test specimen date of this last Monday the 20th September. Need more data to see if thats the start of more sustained rises (or at least a halting of falls) in those age groups.

Since age is an increasingly important aspect to focus on at the moment due to large differences between age groups, I'm posting all of the age group graphs I have for England, but there are a lot so I'll stick them in a spoiler tag. As usual these are by specimen date so most recent days are incomplete. Note different y scales for each graph. And these are raw numbers rather than rates per 100,000, so havent been adjusted to show the exact proportion of impact on each age group. Sorry they may be a bit blurry, but hopefully that doesnt matter since I post them like this mostly for comparing the shapes over time. Oh and I didnt deliberately make the three youngest groups at the bottom larger, I think its just how the forum software formatted them since that part of the image wasnt as wide since its 3 graphs on that row not 4.

Spoiler

 

[Miss-Shelf]

Thanks elbows for your data and analysis
Really appreciate it

 

[elbows]

I know its pretty redundant to post the following data here since we've covered it numerous ways already, but I'll do so anyway in order to point out that the BBC is bothering to tell this story.

The weekly Covid-19 case rate among those aged 10 to 14 has been rising since the start of the autumn term and is now higher than during the summer wave — in fact the rate is at its highest since the start of the pandemic.

The rise coincides with lockdown measures easing and the removal of school restrictions such as mask-wearing and keeping children in so-called bubbles.

However, cases among 15 to 19-year olds are falling, perhaps in part due to high levels of vaccination in the group. Over half of 16 and 17 year-old’s have received one jab, according to the latest NHS England data.

Last week it was announced that those aged 12 and over would be offered the vaccine too, despite the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation saying the health benefits alone were marginal.

Justifying the decision, Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty on Wednesday said it was “inevitable” unvaccinated children would become infected, causing disruption to their education.

Thats the 11:37 entry of their live updates page today https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-58674934

 

[Chz]

I don't think it's necessarily Covid - he's had two negative LFTs and we're waiting on a PCR - but the 11 year old has been sick out of school all week since they sent him home Monday morning. I'm sure there's a lot of Covid out there, but it's matching up with a nasty cold that's also going around.

 

[elbows]

I don't think it's necessarily Covid - he's had two negative LFTs and we're waiting on a PCR - but the 11 year old has been sick out of school all week since they sent him home Monday morning. I'm sure there's a lot of Covid out there, but it's matching up with a nasty cold that's also going around.

Yeah. Our surveillance for other illnesses isnt really strong enough for me to expect it to paint the full picture, but its not completely useless either. This is from the weekly surveillance report at https://assets.publishing.service.g...019975/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w38.pdf

 

[elbows]

And this Covid rates map from the same surveillance report is probably a nice simple way for me to point out the current regional variations.

 

[teuchter]

Someone needs to tell the map maker that you either run your colour coding on a spectrum from green through blue to purple (like the govt dashboard) or you run it from green through yellow to red. You don't set it up so that green is not your colour for "best".

 

[elbows]

More bit and bobs from the BBC live updates page.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-58674934

13:56:

Covid infections in England are now highest among school age children, according to the Office for National Statistics, with secondary school children the worst affected.

Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), says the higher case numbers in that age group will be partly down to more testing among school children.

“Some of this is a genuine rise in cases in that age group and some of it is that you’re finding cases because you’re looking for them,” he tells BBC Radio 4’s The World at One.

He says “adults are infecting children more than children are infecting adults”, and warns there could be a spike among young adults “coming up” as students start university.

“The people we need to most urgently pay attention to are the young adults who socialise a lot, many of whom are still not immunised. That’s where we’re going to see most transmission going on in the coming weeks and months,” he says.

“The universities really need to give every opportunity they can to students coming in to make it easy and convenient.”

14:12:

People in Scotland are twice as likely as those in England to test positive for Covid at the moment.

One in 45 people test positive north of the border compared with one in 90 below it.

But why and will the rest of the UK follow Scotland’s lead?

There are no clear answers. There could be differences in levels of immunity in the two countries due to the spread of the virus in previous waves.

Even the England football team’s run to the finals of the Euros, which did help Covid spread, could have topped up immunity.

Differences in the schooling system – schools in Scotland go back in mid-August rather than early September – could also have an impact.

Understanding the difference could help us figure out what is going to happen in the months to come as there is still considerable uncertainty about how tough this winter is going to be.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

thanks elbows that was really helpful to know the changing recent picture of covid especially when so many staff are parents and so many students are parents and/or work with children in school or nursery