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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

komodo said:
That
386 is admitted WITH covid I think. So not necessarily due to covid.
There were 5 cases in my Dad’s London care home last week - all are still well and 4 no longer testing as positive. So some hope that the boosters are working well for the elderly vulnerable.
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It changes relatively little in terms of the burden on hospitals, and it was true in previous waves too, so we can till look back at graphs that include previous waves for a sense of how this wave stacks up to previous ones and the pressure they bring. It also incorporates people who are in hospital for other reasons and then catch covid, a group which often suffers severe consequences as a result of these hospital acquired infections.

Data about this is far from perfect, but still offers some perspective about the 'for covid' and 'with covid' stuff. It isnt published every day, tends to be weekly, but here is a recent graph that I already mentioned on the Omicron thread recently. And its for patients in hospital rather than daily admissions.



Here is some wording from the NHS website about this sort of data. You may detect via some of the wording that they are not amused by some of the bullshit the right-wing press etc have tried to generate via 'with covid' stories.

The majority of inpatients with Covid-19 are admitted as a result of the infection. A subset of those who contract Covid in the community and are asymptomatic, or exhibited relatively mild symptoms that on their own are unlikely to warrant admission to hospital, will then be admitted to hospital to be treated for something else and be identified through routine testing. However these patients still require their treatment in areas that are segregated from patients without Covid, and the presence of Covid can be a significant co-morbidity in many cases. Equally, while the admission may be due to another primary condition, in many instances this may have been as a result of contracting Covid in the community. For example research has shown that people with Covid are more likely to have a stroke (Stroke Association); in these cases people would be admitted for the stroke, classified as ‘with’ Covid despite having had a stroke as a result of having Covid.
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The headline published numbers in publications to date have been “inpatients with confirmed Covid” without differentiating between those in hospital “for” Covid and those in hospital “with” Covid. Recognising the combination of high community infections rates, with the reduced likelihood of admission for those who contract Covid in the community and are fully vaccinated, the Covid SitRep was enhanced in June 2021 to add a requirement for providers to distinguish between those being primarily treated ‘for’ Covid and those ‘with’ Covid but for whom the primary reason for being in hospital was non-Covid related. In practice this distinction is not always clear at the point of admission when the patient’s record has not been fully clinically coded. In light of this, trusts have been asked to provide this “for” and “with” split on a ‘best endeavours’ basis.
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Statistics » COVID-19 Hospital Activity

Health and high quality care for all, <br />now and for future generations
www.england.nhs.uk www.england.nhs.uk
 
prunus said:
73 hours and counting…
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I got a home test for my son, with none of the 'allowed' three symptoms - erring on the side of caution, given how outdated those symptoms already were, even pre-Omicron.
Symptoms started last Mon LFT's neg but ordered the PCR on Weds, had notice of delivery of that - with a time slot - on/for Thursday but it didn't turn up, then again on Friday, when it did.
Got it in the priority box in plenty of time for the 5pm Friday collection but it didn't arrive to the final destination until 11pm on Saturday (they have previously arrived the same night).
Negative result then emailed early this Tuesday morning.

Looks like backdated results are being added further back/in greater numbers than usual on the Daily Summary, too.

elbows said:
In regards the 'London hospital admissions reaching 400 as a threshold story', todays number was another big leap compared to the previous 2 days where it was around the 300 level.

It has now reached 386.

This data will now not be published for 3 days due to weekend & Christmas.

This is how admissions by age group (one of which is stupidly broad) for the London region looks for the pandemic so far, Data actually goes up to the admissions date of December 22nd despite the 19th being the last date shown on the labels.

Unfortunately I'd say this data is already well on the way to justifying my stance in this wave - strong action is required and the optimists, liars and delayers have doomed us again.

View attachment 302759
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Very sure you know this (!) but the 386 was also for the 22nd - no update on yesterday's numbers and, as you say, no more figures to be published for a few days now.

But it's fiiine - ministers might meet to reconsider, although no earlier than Monday - and we can all have a cracking Xmas, regardless.
 
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komodo said:
That
386 is admitted WITH covid I think. So not necessarily due to covid.
There were 5 cases in my Dad’s London care home last week - all are still well and 4 no longer testing as positive. So some hope that the boosters are working well for the elderly vulnerable.
Click to expand...

Elbows just posted a good thing on this. It's basically bollocks to see anything that positive in the WITH vs FOR covid thing that all the conspiracy people pick up on.
 
sheothebudworths said:
Very sure you know this (!) but the 386 was also for the 22nd - no update on yesterday's numbers and, as you say, no more figures to be published for a few days now.
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Yes, it has always been the case that the hospital admissions/diagnoses for England are several days behind the current date. Its like that every day, no Christmas delays are part of this yet. For some of the other nations of the UK it is even longer, which is why I never advise people to look at overall dashboard UK daily figure for admissions etc, always drill down to individual nations.

In terms of the Christmas schedule, for a long time now they have stopped publishing hospital data at weekends, and this Christmas weekend they also wont publish healthcare data for England on Monday, so just one extra day with no published data on this front.

Here is what the dashboard says about healtchcare data over the coming period:
  • England – no reporting on 25 to 27 December; 1 to 3 January
  • Northern Ireland – no reporting on 25 to 28 December; 1 to 3 January
  • Scotland – no reporting on 25 to 28 December; 1 to 4 January
  • Wales - no reporting on 24 to 29 December; 31 December to 3 January
In terms of other data like cases, vaccinations, deaths, there will be no updates this weekend, and for nations other than England there will also be an additional day or two with no data.

Full details here:

 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Elbows just posted a good thing on this. It's basically bollocks to see anything that positive in the WITH vs FOR covid thing that all the conspiracy people pick up on.
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Thanks. It is true that much bullshit is written about this in order to serve several agendas.

However I suppose I should point out that there are still various aspects of Omicron that may have legitimate implications, and I will not ignore these completely just because of all the bullshit. For example:

The increased transmission of Omicron does imply that we should expect more incidental cases (more people in the community catching it then going to hospital for other reasons) this time, but also potentially a lot of hospital acquired infections which are bad news.

The proportion of patients that end up requiring oxygen may be different this time due to vaccines and properties of Omicron. Likewise the proportion requiring very intensive care may be different.

In terms of numbers of patients in hospital compared to daily admissions, there could also be shorter average lengths of stay with Omicron/with vaccines.

The ratio of hospitalisations to deaths may end up being different. We'll just have to wait and see.

Unfortunately when services get overloaded by sheer number of patients and high levels of staff being off sick, the proportion of cases that end in death tends to increase, most notably during the peak of waves. So there will also be a tug of war between these factors and the protection that vaccines still offer.

We also know that this time around the NHS have several different programmes in effect that aim to reduce the number of people receiving care in hospital. For example some will be kept at home and their blood oxygen levels will be monitored. And there are some drugs that they are going to give to lots of at risk people in an effort to save them from severe disease.
 
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I perfectly understand the issue re over-playing the WITH covid thing but on the other hand there are real differences in the current context as Elbows points out.
 
komodo said:
I perfectly understand the issue re over-playing the WITH covid thing but on the other hand there are real differences in the current context as Elbows points out.
Click to expand...
I doubt the differences will be large enough to bridge the gap between many peoples expectations this time, in the vaccine era, and whats actually going to happen though. Rather a lot of people seem destined to receive a nasty surprise when they watch the news over the coming weeks.
 
S☼I said:
The "thank heavens, Omicron is mild" narrative continues...hired ghoul Jenny Harries the latest mouthpiece to publicly sigh with relief
Click to expand...

It was a mixed message from Harries. I would not call it a sigh of relief, but it did generate dangerous headlines. Other comments were a lot more realistic.

Official findings that Omicron may be less likely to result in serious illness than Delta offer a "glimmer of Christmas hope", the head of the UK Health Security Agency has said.

But Jenny Harries told the BBC it was too early to retract her statement that the variant was the most serious threat the UK had faced during the pandemic.

The UKHSA's findings are "preliminary", she said, and data around Omicron's impact on the elderly is still needed.
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www.bbc.co.uk

Covid: Glimmer of Christmas hope on Omicron, says Jenny Harries

But it is too early to downgrade the serious threat posed by the new variant, says Dr Jenny Harries.
www.bbc.co.uk

The mood music was messed with for Christmas. I doubt that is sustainable. London data tends to imply that new restrictions will have to be announced before the new year, but of course thats a bit harder to predict this time around due to several extra layers of dodgy politics, and several sources of probably unwise hope that various agendas can make use of.

In past severe waves the authorities have found the need to want to find some other signs of hope that they think can be used in order to offer some light at the end of the tunnel to the public during lockdowns. In the first wave it was dangling the prospect that mass testing would reenable something of normal life. In last winters wave vaccines were used to fill that role. This time around the nature of the hope they've clung to ('milder' Omicron) has come at this earlier stage, before the shit hits the fan, and I dont know what they will reach for to serve the purpose of injecting future hope into messaging they have to deliver during a period of restrictions.
 
That is a really good summary elbows

Know I'm not the only one who is really appreciative of the time you take to fill in the gaps - and that I DO know more, largely down to the time and effort you put in - because, as exhausting and frustrating and depressing as it all is, I would still always prefer to know, than not.

Remember all those (very effective and useful/seem to have been dropped) illustrations we had back in the day of how one person can infect multiple others?
Information spreads in the same way - and knowledge is power and all that - so thank you for your ongoing contributions here and therefore, more widely, too. :thumbs:


Wishing you the best Xmas you can have :)
 
Cheers, and to you and everyone. I will try to resist the urge to critique my own contributions to communication this time around, its not been easy because there are more uncertainties this time than ever before, and I was hoping I could have moved on by now.

A genuinely much milder and far less consequential Omicron wave would see me having to defend myself from criticisms that I had cried wolf. But that would be a delightful outcome and a sign that the acute phase of the pandemic was ending. Its fair to say that I'm very far from convinced that this is whats going to happen. I suppose that until the full ramifications of Omicron play out there is still a chance this wont be a giant catastrophe again. But I'm not finding much data I could use to anticipate that will actually be the case this time around.
 
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elbows said:
Cheers, and to you and everyone. I will try to resist the urge to critique my own contributions to communication this time around, its not been easy because there are more uncertainties this time than ever before, and I was hoping I could have moved on by now.
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With the lack of data over the next few days, take a well deserved break from posting on the covid threads, and enjoy some downtime, mate. :)
 
And due to the timing of this I dont think I'll be commenting on the updated modelling much for a few days, I havent had a chance to read the documents yet.

Ministers could meet as soon as Monday to determine whether new restrictions are needed in England over the new year amid growing concerns that soaring Covid cases could hit public services.

They will be expected to assess new modelling from the University of Warwick, given to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in documents published on Thursday.

Scientists have looked at the effects of a potential return to step 2 restrictionsfrom 28 December or 1 January, lasting either two weeks, four weeks or three months until 28 March. No 10 said the data had not yet been considered by ministers.
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www.theguardian.com

Decision on stricter Covid rules for England may come on Monday

Ministers expected to assess latest data given to Sage and decide on possible return to step 2 restrictions
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Dogsauce said:
Btw, it’s worth remembering those 120,000 reported cases are only people testing positive for the first time. It doesn’t include reinfections which will be a fair old number, I know of a lot of people who’ve had it twice now and they’ll be absent from the data. I don’t know if those figures are available elsewhere?
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Estimates of reinfections are published in the weekly COVID-19 surveillance reports. They are apparently adding reinfections to the daily dashboard figures in January (obviously have to decide on a definition of reinfection first).
 
2hats said:
Estimates of reinfections are published in the weekly COVID-19 surveillance reports. They are apparently adding reinfections to the daily dashboard figures in January (obviously have to decide on a definition of reinfection first).
Click to expand...
They could just use the same sort of method as Wales:

Confirmed cases for Wales are calculated using six-week episode periods, with individuals who are tested multiple times in that period only being counted once. Any tests that occur more than six weeks after the initial test will trigger a new testing period.
Click to expand...

From https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/metrics/doc/newCasesBySpecimenDate
 
Eldest daughter had a positive LFT on Saturday 18th, PCR next morning confirmed positive on Monday 20th. Daily LFTs showed a strong positive until the 25th, faint yellow line still positive yesterday, finally negative today, so it’s been 10 days and she didn’t get to end isolation early. She actually feels well today too. Her five year old continues to test negative, I guess if he has no symptoms he can revert to twice-weekly tests now.
 
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